Marin Music Chest continues its 80-year tradition of supporting promising young musicians when it presents the annual Young Artists Concert at 5 p.m. on May 19, in the Mill Valley Mt. Tamalpais United Methodist Church. Admission is free, donations are solicited for the program.
Photo by Eric Chazankin
The concert features five of 2013 Marin Music Chest's 2013 scholarship winners — Laura Arthur (soprano), Hayaka Komatsu (viola), Katarina Lee (piano), Kuni Migimatsu (piano), and Max Norman (clarinet).
The hope is for these youngsters is that they will follow in the footsteps of past Marin Music Chest scholarship award winners, who went on to professional careers, including the late Jean Maguire Mitchell, scholarship winner in 1938, then performing with the San Francisco Symphony for 35 years. Or Joe Allessi Jr., who won his Marin Music Chest honors in 1975, and is currently principal trombonist with the New York Philharmonic, and a member of the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music.
Other Marin Music Chest alumni include Joanna Berman, retired principal ballerina who performed with the San Francisco Ballet for 19 years; Mark Jordan, concertmaster for Modesto Symphony for more than 25 years and associate concertmaster at Marin Symphony for 10 years; and cellist Hai Ye Ni, who made her professional debut at Lincoln Center's Alice Tulley Hall in 1991 and her New York Philharmonic debut in 2003. She is principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a sought-after soloist and chamber musician.