Lang Lang & Friends Virtual Concert Series

Manhin Lung was born in 2005, and started playing piano since he was three. At the age of 6, he was admitted into the GMC Academy Young Pianist Program and has since studied with principal Ms. Rizzo Chung.

Manhin was the winner of several local and international competitions, including Gold Prize of the Elementary Category in the Chopin International Piano Competition in Asia held in Tokyo; First Prize of the Steinway & Sons International Youth Piano Competition (Hong Kong & Macau Region), and repre sented Hong Kong participate in the China Final in Ningbo, where he won the first price as well. In addition, Manhin has actively participated in several performances and music festivals. including the Oxford Piano Festival 2019, Manhin was also invited to perform in the Winner Concert in Shatin Town Hall Auditorium, after he won the prize of Junior Exhibitioner Award 2017 in Hong Kong.

Born in Moscow, Russia in 2010, Deni Kokhanovskii began his musical training at the age of three. He has been studying piano in Moscow’s Gnessin Children School of Music, class of Tatiana Sukhanova since 2017.

In November 2019, Deni won the School’s competition and gave his first-ever performance as a soloist with an orchestra — he played W.A. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.8. I part with the Gnessin School’s Chamber Orchestra, conductor — Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, professor Anatoliy Mukhamedzhyan.

In July 2020, Deni was awarded the First Diploma at the II National Online Contest Music Talents of Russia. The jury of over thirty members, musicians and tutors, prized Deni’s performance of Les Petits Moulins à Vent (The Little Windmills) by F. Couperin and W.A. Mozart’s Rondo in D Major, K.485.

Since 2017, Deni is the Artist-in-Residence at the Memorial Apartment-Museum of El.F. Gnessina. Series of his performances for the Museum’s Musical Program include pieces by J.S. Bach, S. Rachmaninoff, M. Glinka, S. Prokofiev, F.Mendelssohn, A. Khachaturian and W.A. Mozart.

Deni’s most favorite thing is F. Lisz’s Transcendental Etudes performed by Daniil Trifonov.

Ruby Wu, is the scholarship recipient of Robert Black Trust Fund and selected as the Young Scholar of Lang Lang International Music Foundation 2020-2021, now she is studying with her mother, Rizzo Chung, principal of GMC Academy.

She won several prizes in piano competitions locally and internationally, including Silver Prize of the Elementary Category in The Chopin International Piano Competition in Asia held in Tokyo Japan 2017; First Prize and the Grand Prize of the Steinway & Sons International Youth Piano Competition China Final in Beijing. In 2017 September, Ruby has been selected to participate in the 2nd Zhuhai Mozart International Music Competition, and she was successfully advanced to the semi-final round. Ruby has also awarded the Encouragement Prize of the 4th Hanoi International Piano Competition in 2018 Summer.

In 2019, she has won First prizes at Hong Kong Schools Music Festival Junior Exhibitioner Award.

Ruby also plays a duet with her sister, Jodie, forming Wu’s Duo. In 2017 summer, they won the Second Prize as well as Steinway & Sons Achievement Award of a duet competition in The 21st PIARA Final Concours Hamamatsu. In April 2018, she was invited by IMC Music Company Japan to give her Concerto Debut concert in Tokyo Kyurian Hall with Filharmonia Śląska im Henryka Mikołaja Góreckiego Polish, conducted by Mirosław Blaszczyk, and performed Mozart Concerto K414 no.12 in A major. Ruby was always invited to perform and broadcast in RTHK 4 in Hong Kong to share her passion of music with audiences. She loves playing the piano and flute, and uses it to share all her musical ideas to audiences.

Jan Nikovich is a Croatian pianist, currently studying with prof. Ruben Dalibaltayan in Zagreb. He has won many national and international piano competitions, in both solo and chamber music categories.

Jan has performed, solo and with orchestras, in notable venues in Croatia, Italy, Germany, Spain, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, etc.. He has been taught and influenced by some great pianists like Lang Lang, Natalia Trull, Andrea Bonatta, Milana Chernyavska, Grigory Gruzman, and Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy.. His talent has also been recognized by the Croatian Ministry of Education and Sport by whom he has been awarded 7 times for his achievements in the field of Culture. In 2014 he was selected to participate in the Lang Lang Junior Music Camp in Barcelona, where he performed and worked with Lang Lang in concert and in masterclass.

Josephine Chan is a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music studying chamber music with Amy Zanrosso.

She studies piano performance with Elizabeth Schumann and conducting with Stefano Flavoni. Josephine was featured on NPR’s From the Top Show #367 and was invited to participate in the 2020 Hilton Head International Piano Competition, 2019 e-Piano Junior Competition and 2019 Junior Van Cliburn Competition and Festival.

She is a prize winner of 2020 Henry and Carol Zeiter Piano Competition, 2018 GSY Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition and 2015 Virginia Waring International Piano Competition.

Josephine is also part of The Bach Trio, performing regularly in the SF Bay Area and placing first in both the 2020 Galante Chamber Competition and the 2018 American Prize Chamber Performance Competition.

Jan Čmejla was born in 2003 in Prague. He has been playing the piano since the age of six. Since 2018 he has been studying he Prague Conservatory under the guidance of Prof. Eva Boguniová.

Jan has won several music competitions such as Concertino Praga. He has also performed with several orchestras.He participated in the Allianz Junior Music Camp 2015.

Barry Stephenson is one of the most promising acoustic and electric bassists on the music scene today.

Born in Florida in 1987, he began playing the electric bass at the age of 14, with the intention to play rock music. In high school, Barry inadvertently joined the jazz band and started taking acoustic bass lessons when he was 17 in order to prepare for college auditions. He attended Florida State University where he studied jazz and classical double bass with Rodney Jordan and Melanie Punter, respectively. While at Florida State, he also studied with legendary pianist Marcus Roberts. Upon graduating, Barry moved to New Orleans and played with many of the city’s notable musicians while studying for his Master’s degree at the University of New Orleans under the tutelage of Roland Guerin.

In 2011 he joined the Glen David Andrews Band and appeared on several on the band’s albums, as well as serving as musical director on the album Redemption.

Barry joined Jon Batiste and Stay Human in 2013 and has since toured the world nonstop. He has performed at a variety of festivals including the Montreaux, Montreal, Newport, North Sea, Monterey, Umbria, and Playboy jazz festivals as well as Bonnaroo and Lallapalooza. In 2014, Jon purchased a tenor banjo for Barry and had him learn to play it within the thirty minutes prior to a performance on NPR.

Barry has been known to lead and compose for bands in various genres of music. In 2011, he was awarded the ASCAP Foundation Louis Armstrong Award followed by the Svenson Composition Award in 2012. Recently, he released his debut jazz album Basic Truths featuring original compositions.

http://www.barrystephensonmusic.com

Born in 2002, Berkshire, in the United Kingdom, Harvey began learning the piano at the age of 7, passed Grade 8 with Distinction when he was 9, and achieved a Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music (LRSM) Diploma with Distinction aged 11.

He has learned with Professor Edita Stankeviciute of Windsor Piano School for 10 years and now studies with Ms Melanie Spanswick at Eton College. Harvey has been a student at Eton College with both a King’s Scholarship and Music Scholarship since 2016.

Harvey has won prizes at numerous piano competitions nationally and internationally. In 2012, Harvey achieved First Prize at the Young Pianist of the North International Piano Competition, Newcastle; in 2014, he obtained First Prize at the Chopin International Piano Competition, Hartford, USA; and in the same year, he was winner of the Emanuel Trophy Piano Competition at the North London Music Festival, the Festival’s most prestigious competition. He reached the semi-finals of the ‘Nutcracker’ International Competition in Russia in 2015, which was broadcast live on the ‘Russia-Kultura’ channel on Russian national TV, and in the same year also won First Prize and award ‘Best British Musician’ in the Grand Prize Virtuoso International Competition held in London, performing in the Royal Albert Hall for the winners’ concert.

In 2018 Harvey achieved Second Prize in the Windsor International Piano Competition. In 2016 and 2020 Harvey also reached the Keyboard Category Finals of BBC Young Musician, aired on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Four.

Harvey has performed across the world in solo and joint recitals in numerous prestigious venues, including in America, Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Harvey has had masterclasses with many internationally renowned pianists, including Dmitri Alexeev, Charles Owen, Deniz Arman Gelenbe, Dmitri Bashkirov, and Epifanio Comís. He was also selected from hundreds of applicants worldwide in 2014 to attend Lang Lang’s Junior Music Camp in Vienna and was fortunate enough to perform a Brahms piano duet with Lang Lang himself in the Musikverein’s Golden Hall, the home venue for the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. Most recently, Harvey had the opportunity to record for a promotional video for Lang Lang’s new album, Piano Book, in 2018.

Harvey also studies the violin, organ and harpsichord at Eton and enjoys composing and playing in chamber music ensembles in his spare time. He has a Grade 8 Distinction on the violin, and at fourteen he won the school’s Composition Competition. Alongside his musical studies, his extracurricular pursuits include competing in national maths Olympiads, captaining his school’s chess team, and cross-country running.

Mar Valor Navarro was born in Valencia in 2000. She studied piano at the Conservatorio Municipal José Iturbi with Juan Lago, where she graduated in July 2016 and was awarded with the “Best academic record prize” and the Piano and Chamber Music Honor Awards.

After two years under the guidance of Professor Ana Guijarro in Madrid, she moved to Cologne, where she is currently studying with Professor Claudio Martínez-Mehner. She has had the opportunity to work with important pianists, such as Lang Lang, Andreas Staier, Paul Badura-Skoda, Edith Fischer, José Ramón Méndez, Robert McDonald, Julian Martin, Joaquín Soriano, Pascal Rogé, Nina Tichman or Josu de Solaun.

Mar was awarded the first prize in the piano solo category in 2014 and in 2017 in the competition Jugend Musiziert in Germany. Additionally, she has been awarded prizes in numerous national and international competitions, not only as a piano soloist but also in different categories, such as piano four hands, piano-violin duo or early music (as a harpsichordist). She was the only European among the less than 50 selected pianists to take part in the “8th International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians” in Moscow.

Since her first solo piano recital for the Euterpe Foundation in 2014 in León, Spain, she has given many concerts in important concert halls throughout Europe. Mar has also performed as a soloist with orchestras, interpreting Mozart’s 21st and 23rd concertos, as well as concertos by Beethoven, Chopin and Grieg.

Her education has been supported and sponsored by Loewe-Hazen, the Lang Lang Foundation, the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and the “Fundación Iturbi”, while the Bachelor of Music degree she is currently pursuing in the “Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln” is funded by the German Academic Exchange System.

Allianz Lang Lang Music Ambassador (Selected10). Performed at Warsaw Hall(Poland) / 2nd Vienna Int’l Competition-Gold Medal/ First prize Gyeongju Int’l Competition / Selected 2020 Art of the Piano Festival (USA) / Cleveland Int’l Piano Competition Young Artists(USA) / X Int’l Tchaikovsky Competition Young Musicans Semi-finallist/ 25th Int’l Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition(Poland)- Distinction win /15th Ettlingen Int’l For Young advance to final(Germany) / Int’l Tchaikovsky online competition Young Musicians 5th Prize.

Marco A. Jimenez is in 12th grade and is currently homeschooled. He plays the piano, violin, and organ, and also composes classical music. He is a 2020 winner of the National YoungArts Competition in three disciplines for classical music: piano, composition, and organ. Marco was the winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Stillman-Kelley Award for Piano. As a two-time winner of the Wilkof Young Artists Concerto Competition and as the winner of the Justine LeBaron Young Artists Competition, Marco played with the Sarasota Orchestra and will be playing with the Florida Orchestra, respectively. He is currently the concertmaster of the Sarasota Youth Philharmonic.

His compositions have won numerous awards including Honorable Mention for the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award and the John and Margaret Pierson Award for the National Federation of Music Clubs Junior Composer’s Contest. Three of his compositions have been published by TrevCo Music Publishing.

Over the past summers, Marco attended Interlochen Center for the Arts, Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI), the Southeastern Piano Festival (SEPF), Philadelphia Young Pianists’ Academy (PYPA), and the Texas Organ Academy Online Summer Camp.

Kaan Baysal has participated in Allianz Junior Music Camp in Barcelona and shared the same stage with Lang Lang in Istanbul in 2014.

He studies the piano at Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts under the tutelage of Professor Wolfram Schmitt Leonardy. Kaan has performed with many orchestras and won prizes in international competitions including Lang Lang China Grand Canal Competition. He has been awarded the Mozart Solistenpreis by the Mozart Kurpfalz Gesellschaft in Germany. Kaan Baysal is the brand ambassador of Allianz Turkey.