Last modified: Friday, October 9, 2009
IU Jacobs School of Music student receives music scholarship, heard on national radio broadcast
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 9, 2009
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Jingxuan Zhang, a 16-year-old piano student in the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, has been awarded a $10,000 Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award by From the Top, the non-profit organization best known for its NPR and PBS programs featuring America's best young classical musicians.
Zhang will be heard on a broadcast of From the Top which will air nationally the week of Oct. 19 as part of From the Top's 10th Anniversary Season and on Indianapolis' WFYI 90.1 FM on Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. The broadcast can also be heard at www.fromthetop.org.
A high school student from Westfield, Ind., who plays the double bass in the Carmel High School orchestra, Zhang has also studied piano with Jacobs Professor Arnaldo Cohen for several years. On the Oct. 25 broadcast, Zhang will perform "Chanson Bohème" from George Bizet's opera Carmen and be interviewed by host Christopher O'Riley.
"Jingxuan is such a gifted young man," said Cohen. "He is a wonderful musician, a hard worker and has a great sense of humor."
Born in Beijing, China, Zhang began taking piano lessons at the age of 5. His family moved to the United States in 2001, when he was 8 years old, and settled in Westfield, Ind., a year later. He won the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Young Musicians Contest in June 2008.
Through From the Top, Zhang recently received a Steinway piano, courtesy of Rick Daigle. Zhang plans to use his Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award on education, including tuition at the Jacobs School of Music Pre-College Program.
James Kim, a 16-year-old cellist who studied in the Jacobs School of Music String Academy for six years with Susan Moses, co-director of the academy, won the same $10,000 award and will also be featured on the broadcast. Kim also won the Boston Symphony Young Artists Prize in the spring and performed Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations with the Boston Pops in June.
