chung park - conductor and music director
Chung Park is quickly establishing himself amongst the finest of the next generation of American conductors. Eminent composer Steve Reich described his conducting as “revelatory” and called him “a young conductor to keep an ear and eye on.” Critic Lawrence Johnson of the Miami Herald hailed his recent performance of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale as “masterfully directed” and his conducting of Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun as “lucid and refined.”
Mr. Park currently serves as Music Director of the Idaho State-Civic Symphony in Pocatello, Idaho, and Assistant Professor of Upper Strings at Idaho State University. He is also Music Director and Conductor of Project Copernicus, a large chamber ensemble dedicated to performing music by living composers that has received wide critical acclaim.
Mr. Park has worked with some of today’s finest soloists, including the Ahn Trio, pianists Edward Auer and David Gross, soprano Monica Yunus, and violinist Corey Cerovsek, among others. Mr. Park will work this season with hornist Gail Williams, violinist Aaron Berofsky, and ‘cellist Edward Arron.
Active as a guest conductor, Mr. Park returned to the Western Plains Opera in the fall of 2010 to lead performances of Verdi’s La Traviata and conducted Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in December of 2010.
Park’s primary musical studies were completed at the Peabody Conservatory and the University of Miami, where he received a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree as a student of renowned conductor and composer Thomas Sleeper. Additionally, Park studied in Hannover, Germany, with Hatto Beyerle of the Alban Berg Quartet.
Further studies include the Pierre Monteux School, Tafelmusik Institute in Toronto, Ontario, and theInternational Festival-Institute at Roundtop,Texas. Mr. Park has performed in masterclasses for Marin Alsop, Andrey Boreyko, Per Brevig, Raymond Harvey, Catherine Comet, Pascal
Verrot and Jorge Mester.
Prior appointments include Acting Director of Orchestral Activities at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, as well as the faculties of the Universities of Chicago, North Dakota and Indiana-South Bend. Park served as conductor of the Western Michigan University Chamber Orchestra and Opera Theater and music director of several youth orchestras. Mr. Park conducted an all-Hovhaness concert in May 2006 with the Filharmonia Bourgas (Bulgaria), underwritten by a grant from the Theodore Presser Foundation. A CD of this program, recorded with the Frost Symphony Orchestra, was released on Centaur Records in fall 2008 to wide critical acclaim. Active as a clinician, educator and in community outreach, Mr. Park was honored by the North Dakota String Teacher’s Association with their Distinguished Service Award in 2008. He returned to North Dakota to conduct the 2010 North Dakota All-State Orchestra and has been on the faculty of Dakota Chamber Music since the summer of 2009.
Park has a special interest in providing musical experiences to people who are not served by traditional musical outreach programs. He and Project Copernicus co-director Steve Danyew are hoping to expand musical activities to include people in Hospice, the homeless, children in foster care, the developmentally disabled and those who are incarcerated. In addition, he often serves as a guest conductor and clinician in schools and music festivals. He also appears regularly as a guest speaker for community organizations such as the Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs.
Park is an outspoken proponent of new music, having led works by many of today’s leading composers including Steve Reich, Mark O’Connor, James Stephenson and 2006 BMI award winner Stephen Danyew.
