Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Joey Zhu | 2nd Prize | Piano | 5th Edition | ENKOR Int'l Music Competition


Joey Zhu, Age 16
USA
Score: 91.79

Joey Zhu, 16, is a junior at California High School, San Ramon. He has shown his music talent since he was six, when he won a music composition award. He began his piano at the age of 5, having studied with Tamriko Siprashvili, Jed Galant, and Olya Katsman. He has won numerous awards in piano competitions. This year Joey was a recipient of the MTAC panel honors. He was his age category winner of the 2018 eMUSE International Music Competition. He performed at Carnegie Hall twice as the first prize winner of both the American Fine Arts Festival (2018) and the American Protégé (2017). Joey was invited three times to perform at the Junior Bach Festival. In 2017 Joey was featured soloist to perform Schumann’s piano concerto with the (former) El Camino Youth Symphony Sinfonietta, and earlier in 2018 performed Rachmaninoff’s 2nd piano concerto with the Livermore-Amador Symphony as their concerto competition winner. This year, he won again at the Golden State Youth Orchestra piano concerto competition. Joey’s piano first prizes also include the Nafisa Taghioff Award of the Fremont Symphony Young Artist Competition, the Competition for Young Musicians of the Livermore-Amador Symphony, the US New Star Piano Competition, and the Great Composer Competition. He also won award and top prizes in the Marilyn Mindell Piano Competition,the CAPMT competition, the MTAC concerto competition, US Open concerto competition, East Bay Piano Competition, and Palo Alto Philharmonic Symphony concerto competition.

Besides piano, Joey also studied cello since the age of 8 with Ewen Tsai and Michelle Kwon. He attended Irene Sharp’s summer cello workshop twice. Joey has played cello in youth orchestras since the age of 10, including the Tri-Valley Youth Orchestra (2011), Livermore-Amador Youth Orchestra (2012-2013), California Youth Symphony’s Associate Orchestra (2013-2015), and the Senior Symphony of Golden State Youth Orchestra (formerly El Camino Youth Orchestra) (2016-2018), of which he is currently the assistant principal cellist. In 2017 Joey and El Camino Youth Orchestra toured Central Europe during the summer, performing Russian music in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary.

Joey is also actively involved in his school music program. For the past three years he was his school’s principal cellist, section coach, and substitute conductor. Joey also enjoys composition for both solo instruments and ensembles, and took composition lessons at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music intensive composition workshop during the summer.

Joey’s music endeavors are limited to not only performance or school but also the community, in which he initializes and participates in local volunteer concerts, and plays for his local senior center biweekly. He has served as a soloist (both piano and cello) and piano accompanist in his church since 8th grade. There he often rearranges worship music to accommodate more instruments.

Outside of music, Joey also enjoys studying math and science and hopes to major in physics in college. He was one of several global top scorers and 1st place in his region at the 2018 Physics Bowl. At school he is an active member of several clubs. Joey is the president and founder of his school’s music composition club, treasurer for the charity club One Dollar for Life, and co-president of his school’s Science Olympiad teams and physics club. Besides music, Joey enjoys drawing, swimming, basketball, science, and baking.

(1) Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, 1st movement, Ludwig van Beethoven, 9:27
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJCMRSnbwo

(2) Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op 18, 1st movement, Sergei Rachmaninoff, 10:38
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQkP0hcu6Hg