2018 Finalists

Christian Chiu, 15, attends Upper St. Clair High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the age of ten, he made his orchestral debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He has been prizewinner and finalist in national and international competitions, including the MostArts Festival Piano Competition and the Arthur Fraser International Piano Competition/Southeastern Piano Festival (SEPF). He currently studies privately with Professor Natasha Snitkovsky.

Ashley, age 14, is a freshman at New Trier High School in Illinois. She currently studies piano with Brenda Huang and she started piano lessons when she was five years old. Ashley won second prize winner of the 2017 Emilio Del Rosario Concerto Competition. She was an honorable mention of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Concerto Competition and Depaul Concerto Festival. She got 2nd place at the Sejong Music Competition senior division 2017, and 1st prize junior division 2016. She also received 1st place of the Society of American Musicians Competition 2016 intermediate division and 2015 junior division. She is the winner of the 2015 Granquist Music competition, olympic division. Ashley has received numerous awards including the Illinois State Music Teachers Association.

Besides piano, Ashley loves playing violin with her friends and her school symphony orchestra. She likes math and hanging out with friends. She also enjoys performing at retirement homes around suburbs of Chicago.

Fifteen-year-old Korean-American pianist Tyler Kim, made his concert debut at the age of ten with the Viennese International Orchestra at the Palais Ausburg in Vienna, Austria. Since then, he’s performed with various orchestras including the San Diego Symphony, Inland Valley Symphony, Alicante Philharmonic Orchestra, Temecula Valley Symphony, and Montgomery Symphony Orchestra.

Highlights of his recent accomplishments in the competitive scene include 1st place at the Blount-Slawson Young Artists Competition, 1st place at the Mondavi Center National Young Artists Competition, 1st at the MTNA California State Competition, and Alternate at the MTNA Southwest Division. Most recently Tyler won the Grand Prize at the LA Music Center’s Spotlight Competition awarding him $5,000, a full scholarship to the Aspen Music Festival, and a performance opportunity at Walt Disney Hall.

Outside of concertos, Tyler has performed several solo recitals, including two performances at Carnegie Hall, an hour-long American Cancer Society Benefit Concert on behalf of Jacob’s House, and a recital sponsored by the “Advocates of Classical Music” at La Jolla Riford Library. Tyler also enjoys participating in chamber ensembles and has performed numerous works including Dvorak Piano Quartet, Arensky Piano Trio No. 1, Beethoven’s Spring Sonata, and Brahms Piano Trio No. 1.

Tyler is a freshman at Temecula Valley High School and lives with his parents, younger sister, and dog, Happy. He’s currently studying with Myong-Joo Lee, and Fabio Bidini at the Colburn Academy in downtown Los Angeles.

Fifteen-year-old pianist Angeline Ma has been playing since the age of five and currently studies with Susan Starr. Angeline has won prizes in competitions including the Princeton Festival Piano Competition, Kennett Square Symphony Competition, Tri-County Youth Festival, International Young Artist Piano Competition in Washington DC, Chopin International Piano Competition in Hartford, CT, and Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition in Washington DC. Angeline was a finalist in the 2017 Greenfield Competition’s Junior category with the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as a 2017-2018 Chopin Foundation of the United States scholarship recipient. Angeline is a two-time recipient of the Vladimir & Haewon Feltsman Piano Foundation scholarship.

In 2017, Angeline gave a recital at Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park. In 2018, she performed with the Ambler Symphony Orchestra as a Menges Scholarship recipient. Angeline has also performed at the Polish Embassy in Washington, D.C. as a prizewinner in the Kosziuszko Foundation Chopin Competition. Angeline has taken master classes with the likes of Vladimir Feltsman, Eleanor Sokoloff, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Tamas Ungar, Philip Kawin, Victor Rosenbaum, and Alexander Korsantia.

Angeline is from Berwyn, Pennsylvania. She is currently a sophomore at Conestoga High School and was a 2017 recipient of her school's Leadership and Service Award.

Maxine Park, thirteen, is an eighth-grader at Crossroads Academy in Lyme, NH. She has been a student of Mila Filatova since age seven. Maxine has received top prizes at numerous regional and international competitions, including the Chopin International Piano Competition, Paderewski International Competition, Steinway Society of Massachusetts Piano Competition, New England Piano Teachers Association Mildred Freiberg Middle School Competition, and New Hampshire Granite State Piano Competition in both solo and duet categories.

Over the past two years, Maxine has performed as a soloist with several orchestras, including the New York Concerti Sinfonietta at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall and the Nashua Chamber Orchestra as a guest artist in the 2016-2017 season. She was invited to perform in the International Chopin Festival “Lato z Chopinem” in Busko-Zdroj, Poland in 2016 and 2018. In addition to performing multiple times at Carnegie Hall and Boston’s Symphony Hall, Maxine has performed in public master classes with Simone Dinnerstein, Emilie Naoumoff, John Perry, and Ilana Vared. She was also a performer in two videos produced by From the Top: “A Star Wars Musical Mashup” and “Fantastic Musicians and Where to Find Them.”

Outside of music, Maxine has placed in state and national math competitions and enjoys science, writing, and poetry. In 2017, she was one of 28 students in the USA named a Caroline D. Bradley Scholar and awarded a full four-year, merit-based high school scholarship. She will be attending Phillips Exeter Academy, starting this fall.

Simeon Radev was born near Boston and now lives in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where his current teachers are Dr. Alan Weinberg (piano) and Dr. William Terwilliger (violin). He gives recitals on both instruments and plays with orchestras. Simeon Radev comes from an artistic family. His grandfather gained renown as a violinist and conductor with the Royal Symphony Orchestra in Bulgaria. At the age of seven, Simeon was admitted to study piano at the National School of Music in Bulgaria, where he stayed for two years. Simeon's passion for musical arts started with Mozart. When still seven years old, he played Faccile (first movement) at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, a performance broadcasted on national television on Christmas Day.

His first DVD recording, at age eleven, was Bach’s D minor concerto (first movement). At fifteen Simeon made his orchestral debut playing piano (Haydn) and violin (Kabalevsky) within the same week in Columbia, South Carolina. He served as South Carolina All State Orchestra Concertmaster when he was sixteen, and when he was seventeen, the South Carolina Music Educators Association awarded him for his performance with All National Honors Orchestra.

Simeon has been a junior and senior winner of South Carolina Music Teachers Association, Music Teachers National Association, Atlanta Romantic Impressionistic Piano Competition (2014), and Young Artist Performance Competitions (2016, 2017), and Grand Prix recipient at Nessebar International Young Artists Festival (2015). He is a scholarship recipient from National Music Clubs, South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts, and Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University.

Simeon is excited to research why music improves intelligence, happiness, and work ethic at Harvard University in the fall.

Perren-Luc Thiessen, a 15-year-old pianist from Texas, studies with Dr. Tamás Ungár and Dr. Mary Humm. He has had private lessons and performed in Master Classes with Balazs Szokolay, Berndt Goetzke, Stanislav Ioudenitch, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, Alexander Korsantia, Natarzyna Popowa-Zydron, Fabio Bidini, and Andraz Jasinski.

Perren-Luc made his Orchestral Debut at age 12 in Italy with the Todi International Music Masters Festival and has appeared with the Padereweski Piano Academy, Round Rock Symphony, and Fort Worth Civic Symphony Orchestras. He was invited to perform with the orchestra in Moscow after winning the 2017 American Fine Arts International Concerto Competition. Additionally, he participates in the Semper International Music Festival in Völs am Schlern, Italy, the International Piano Master Classes in Katowice, Poland, and in 2017 Perren-Luc was the youngest participant in the elite Young Artists Program at Piano Texas, where he performed again in June of this year with the Round Rock Symphony. He also was one of the fifteen finalists (and the only American) chosen to perform at the Grand Piano Competition, founded by Denis Matsuev, at the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory in the spring of 2018.

Significant among his International Prizes are First Prize and Award for the Best Performance of a Romantic Work in the prestigious 2017 Young Pianist of the North International Piano Competition in the United Kingdom, and Second Prize, Most Promising Young Artist, and Best Chopin Performance in the Tkaczewski International Competition in Poland. Also in 2017 he won First Prize in the Debut International Piano Competition which resulted in his 2017 Carnegie (Weill) Hall Debut Recital and a similar performance in the beautiful Ehrbar Saal in Vienna. He has won numerous First Prizes in Texas in both Concerto and Solo Competitions, including First Prize at the Texas Music Teachers Association Solo Competition, as well as First Prize in Concerto Competitions sponsored by the Fort Worth Civic Orchestra, Plano Symphony, and Lewisville Symphonies.

Perren-Luc loves reading and writing poetry and short stories, and he is an amateur barista.

Christopher Zandieh began his Suzuki piano studies at age 4 on Long Island, and, by age 6, enrolled at the School for Strings in NYC as a student of Marina Obukovsky. He is presently 14 years old, in his fourth year of study at the Juilliard School as a student of Ernest Barretta, and a 9^th-grade student at Syosset High School Long Island, where he is also the principal alto saxophonist in the Jazz Band. Christopher had his first performance at Carnegie Hall at age 6 and returned there three years later as the Grand Prix Winner of the Concert Festival International Competition. He has participated in several masterclasses within the past few years with renown pianists, including Lydia Artymiw, Andreas Klein and international virtuoso Lang Lang.

In October 2014, Christopher was chosen from among 100 pianists as the featured soloist to perform for Mr. Lang as part of the international 101 Pianists Program at the Tilles Center on Long Island. In 2016, he was the 1^st prize winner of the Great Composers’ Competition, and, last year, was a semi-finalist in the Kaufman International Youth Piano Competition. In December 2016, Christopher was a featured soloist at the Piano Showcase in Rochester, NY, for the annual NYS School Music Association Conference. In the same month, Christopher won the annual piano competition at Juilliard’s Pre-College Division and performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 with the Juilliard Pre-College Symphony at Peter Jay Sharp Theater in Lincoln Center.

A month later, he was chosen as a finalist for the Chappaqua Orchestra Concerto Competition, the Ensemble 212 Young Artist Competition, and the NY Chamber Players Orchestra Competition. Most recently, he was the 2^nd prize winner of this year’s Chappaqua Orchestra Concerto Competition. Last year, Christopher was the Grand Prize winner of the 2018 MostArts Festival, which has led to this year’s performance of the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 at the 2019 opening Gala.