Audrey Vardanega and Chase Park in Concert

Praised as a “[musically] eloquent” (San Francisco Classical Voice) player “with the kind of freedom, authority, and strength…that one expects from the world’s finest pianists” and a “forcefully established…major talent” (The Berkeley Daily Planet), twenty-year-old pianist and composer Audrey Vardanega was born and raised in Oakland, California and began formal piano training with acclaimed pianist Robert Schwartz at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 2002 to 2013. Since then, she has also worked with notable pianists such as Gary Graffman, Alain Planés, Yefim Bronfman, Wojciech Switala, and Richard Goode. Her past primary instructors include former assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Seymour Lipkin, former Head of Music at the BBC World Service Jeremy Siepmann, and Professor Christopher Elton of London's Royal Academy of Music. She currently studies with Victor Rosenbaum and Maria Asteriadou in New York City. 

Audrey Vardanega and Chase Park at the Maybeck

Sunday, August 13, 2017 at 3:00pm

This concert is $20 General Admission at the door. 

Praised as a player “with the kind of freedom, authority, and strength that one expects from the world’s finest pianists” (Berkeley Daily Planet), 21-year- old Audrey Vardanega was born and raised in Oakland, California and began her piano studies at the age of six with Araks Aghazarian. Audrey made her solo recital debut with IMG Artists’ Festival del Sole at the age of 11 and performed three Mozart piano concerti with the Midsummer Mozart Festival and Maestro George Cleve between 2010-2013. She was Principle Keyboardist of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra from 2011-2013 and has had her own orchestral compositions premiered by the San Francisco Academy Orchestra. In February, Audrey participated in the Carnegie Hall Workshops led by Jonathan Biss, exploring late works by Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert. Her past instructors include Christopher Elton, Seymour Lipkin, Jeremy Siepmann, Robert Schwartz, and Victor Rosenbaum. In May, Audrey graduated from Columbia with a B.A. in Political Science. She earned a fellowship at Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute for the summer of 2017, where she collaborated with and received instruction from Leon Fleisher and Robert Levin, among others. She will begin her Masters of Music at Mannes College The New School under the tutelage of Richard Goode in September. She hopes to publish her Senior Thesis on the politics of pianism and, in her spare time, hosts a Classical radio show on New York’s WKCR FM.

Chase Park, born in 1998, began his musical training at the age of 4 with Madeleine Golz at the JCC Thurnauer School of Music in Tenafly, NJ. At age 11, Chase was accepted into the Perlman Music Program, where he spent 7 consecutive summers intensively studying chamber music and cello performance under the tutelage of Merry Peckham, Ronald Leonard, Paul Katz, and Itzhak Perlman. That same year, Chase began his studies at the Juilliard School’s Precollege division with Minhye Clara Kim. In 2014, Chase was featured on NPR’s From the Top, performing the Schubert’s Impromptu No. 3 in G Major accompanied by Christopher O’Riley. He also collaborated with the Shanghai Quartet, performing the String Sextet in G major by Johannes Brahms. In addition, as a finalist in classical music, Chase was invited to participate in Young Arts’s National YoungArts Week in Miami, FL. Chase has performed in cello master classes with Carter Brey, Colin Carr, Jonathan Spitz, Peter Wiley, Steven Isserlis, Ron Leonard and Paul Katz. Chase currently studies at the Curtis Institute of Music with Peter Wiley and Carter Brey and has attended Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute in the summer of 2017.