News

Lee University will conclude its Presidential Concert Series with “Ning and Friends” on Tuesday, April 8, featuring violinist Qian Zhou and Lee’s own Ning An on piano. The concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Squires Recital Hall.

The performance will feature Mozart’s Sonata for piano and violin, Franz Schubert’s Fantasie in C major violin and piano, and Eugene Ysaye’s Poeme Elegiaque, among others.

Since winning the First Grand Prize and all five major prizes at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris in 1987, Qian Zhou has been in the first rank of world-class violinists of her generation. She has recorded seven CDs with the Naxos and Marco Polo labels and has also appeared in two documentaries, one of which is Isaac Stern’s Oscar-winning “From Mao to Mozart.”

Zhou has performed with the Baltimore Symphony, BBC Symphony, VVC Scottish Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Rome Symphony Orchestra, Spanish National Orchestra, Russian Philharmonic, Beijing Central Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, among others. She currently serves as head of strings and assistant professor of violin at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore.

An, an assistant professor of music at Lee’s School of Music, is hailed by the New York Concert Review as a musician who “combines a flawless technique and mastery of the instrument with an expressive power that is fueled by profound and insightful understanding.”

An’s prizes from the Queen Elizabeth, Cleveland, and William Kapell Piano Competitions led to performances from Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, Salle Verdi (Milan), to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. He has been invited to perform at numerous festivals, including the International Chopin Festival in Poland, the Gina Bachauer Piano Festival in Salt Lake City, and the Interlaken Music Festival in Switzerland.

 
Since making his orchestral debut at the age of 16 with the Cleveland Orchestra, An has been a featured soloist with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. An has also performed with groups such as the Ysaye, Daedalus, and Takacs Quartets as well as instrumentalists James Buswell, Paul Neubauer, Andres Diaz and Soovin Kim.

An was a top prize winner of the Paloma O’Shea Santander Competition, the Tivoli International Piano Competition, the Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition and the Alfred Cortot Prize winner of the International Chopin Piano Competition.

Tickets for “Ning and Friends” will be available at the Lee University Box Office in the Dixon Center or by phone (614-8343) one week prior to the concert, from 3-6 p.m.

For more information about the Presidential Concert Series, please visit https://www.leeuniversity.edu/pcs or call the School of Music at (423) 614-8240.