Yunhee Choi & Hun Ouk Park Duo Concert

October 11, 2012

VIOLIN AND PIANO DUO CONCERT

Yunhee Choi, piano  

Hun Ouk Park, violin

PROGRAMME

Arvo Pärt, Fratres César Franck, Sonata for violin and piano in A major

I. Allegretto ben moderato

II. Allegro

III. Ben moderato: Recitative-Fantasia

IV. Allegretto poco mosso

Arvo Pärt, Spiegel im Spiegel

Yunhee Choi, pianist

Yunhee Choi, born in Seoul, South Korea, studied chamber music and song accompaniment with Pamela Lidiard at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After achieving MMus and MPerf which are postgraduate courses, she has been working as a staff accompanist at the Guildhall and City Lit, playing for classes and performances, and with her freelance career performing as an accompanist. Currently, she is also working as translator for the South Korean Embassy in the UK.

Yunhee thinks her life as accompanist probably began when she was nine years old, playing for mass with children’s choir in a local church. Her interests in humanities led her to Sogang University, where she studied linguistics, and literature in English and French. In the university, she joined the school chorus to sing. She became a conductor there and gave regular concerts for many years. She also continued to play for mass and choirs in local churches. She learned the organ with Sr. Helen Yoon at Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres in Korea.

Then she decided to take up music more seriously and went to Sungshin Women’s University to study piano where she was awarded full scholarship by Haesung Cultural Foundation. She studied with Namjoo Lee and Yoonjung Ahn.

After coming to London, Yunhee was coached regularly by Graham Johnson, Iain Burnside and Eugene Asti. She played in a concert directed by Iain Burnside in City of London Festival in 2009. Vocal classes with Sarah Walker, mezzo-soprano, and Adrian Thomson, tenor, are among many other classes she played for many terms. Yunhee has recently given a lot of concerts with chamber musicians and singers in UK, Ireland and Korea. She won the second prize in a composition contest by Catholic Lay Apostolate Council of Korea in 2008. Yunhee has recently become a Steinway Artist.

Hun Ouk Park, violinist

Hun Ouk was born in South Korea 1989. He started playing the piano at the age of six and the violin at the age of seven. When he was eight years old he went over to Russia to study at the Saint-Petersburg Special Music School of N.A Rimsky-Korsakov with Professor Vladimir Ovcharek.

In 2001 he went over to England to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School with Simon Fisher, and Maciej Rakowski. During his stay at the Menuhin school he participated in many concerts, for example playing at the Mozart festival in Turkey, at the Royal Albert hall, Queen Elizabeth hall and the Wigmore hall.

In 2007 he went on to study at the Royal College of Music with a full scholarship studying under Itzhak Rashokovsky. Currently he is a post-graduate student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama actively participating in solo, chamber music, and orchestral concerts.

For more information, please visit http://www.steinwayhall.co.uk/news-events or call 020 7487 3391.

Leadership and Innovation

10 October 2012

6:00 – 7:45pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8:45pm

Daiwa Foundation Japan House

Companies today need leaders who know how to recognise opportunities for innovation and how to create cultures that encourage innovation. A failure to innovate could put their own survival at risk. But what is the recipe for successful innovation? This seminar will focus on the leadership, values, culture and organisational structures required for successful innovation. The two speakers, from Japan and Cambridge, will both discuss non-Western approaches to innovation. Mr Hiroyuki Itoh, CEO of Crypton Future Media, creator of the globally popular ‘vocaloid’ Hatsune Miku, will talk about how he built an innovative consumer-generated media business against the backdrop of traditional Japanese business culture. Dr Jaideep Prabhu, co-author of the book Jugaad Innovation (Jossey Bass, 2012), will argue that the West must look to places like India, Brazil and China for a new, frugal and flexible approach to innovation. He will show how, in these emerging markets, Jugaad (a Hindi word meaning an improvised solution using limited resources) is leading to dramatic growth, and how Western companies can adopt Jugaad innovation to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive world. This is the sixth seminar in our 2012 series Leadership: People and Power in the UK and Japan.

Hiroyuki Itoh

Hiroyuki Itoh has been handling software sound source since 1995, and is the developer of Character Vocal Series 01: Hatsune Miku, which was released in 2007.  As CEO of Crypton Future Media, Itoh has established himself as a visionary “meta-creator” – one who creates various products and services to assist the creations of other people. Soon after creating a new category of Vocaloid entertainers with the introduction of Hatsune Miku, he launchedPIAPRO, the Vocaloid info, music and artwork-sharing site. Most recently in 2011, he started the music aggregation service ROUTER.FM, which has started to transmit more than 1,600 independent labels to the world.

Dr Jaideep Prabhu

Dr Jaideep Prabhu is Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise and Director of the Centre for India & Global Business at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. His research interests are in marketing, innovation, strategy and international business. His current research is mainly on how multinationals are using emerging markets like India as a lab to do affordable and sustainable innovation for global application. Prabhu has taught and consulted with executives from ABN Amro, Bertelsmann AG, BP, BT, EDS, IBM, ING Bank, Nokia, Philips, Roche, Shell, Vodafone and Xerox among other international companies. He has appeared on BBC News24 and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and his work has been profiled inBusinessWeek, BBC World Service, The Economic Times, The Economist, The Financial Times, Le Monde, MIT Sloan Management Review, The New York Times, The Sunday Times and The Times. His book, Jugaad Innovation, will be available to purchase at the event at the special price of £18.99 (20% off the cover price).

Maritime Strategy and National Security in Japan and Britain: From the First Alliance to Post-9/11

3 October 2012

Daiwa Foundation Japan House

Sharing a similar geography at the opposite ends of the Eurasian Continent, and dependent on maritime trade to supplement the lack of strategic resources, both the UK and Japan relied on the sea for their economic survival and independence as sovereign states. From the first alliance in 1902, through the World Wars, to the more recent operations in the Indian Ocean and Iraq, sea power has played a central role in the strategic calculus of both countries. This thought-provoking book, comprising contributions from a group of international scholars, explores the strategic meaning of being an island nation. It investigates how, across more than a century, sea power empowered – and continues to empower – both the UK and Japan with a defensive shield, an instrument of deterrence, and an enabling tool in expeditionary missions to implement courses of action to preserve national economic and security interests worldwide. At a time when Anglo-Japanese security relations are back on the agenda of the two governments, this book represents a timely work exploring the reasons for enhanced cooperation. Here is a link to an article by the author in the Asahi Shimbun Newspaper.

Dr Alessio Patalano

Dr Alessio Patalano is Lecturer in War Studies at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and specialises in Japanese naval history and strategy and contemporary maritime issues in East Asia. He is the Director of the Asian Security & Warfare Research Group and Research Associate at the King’s China Institute. In Japan, Dr Patalano has been a Visiting Scholar at Aoyama Gakuin University and at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), both in Tokyo, and currently is Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University Japan.

Dr Philip Towle (Chair)

Dr Philip Towle was Deputy Director of the Centre of International Studies in Cambridge from 1982 to 1993 and Director from 1993 to 1998. He retired in September 2012 and is now Visiting Professor at the University of Buckingham. Dr Towle joined Cambridge in 1980 following a period as a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University. His research interests are in East Asian security and the causes and the consequences of warfare. His most recent books have been: Going to War: British Debates from Wilberforce to Blair(Palgrave), From Ally to Enemy: Anglo- Japanese Military Relations, 1900-45 (Global Oriental), andBritain and Japan in the Twentieth Century: One Hundred Years of Trade and Prejudice (I. B. Tauris, edited with Margaret Kosuge).

BOOKING FORM

Japan Foundation at Japan Matsuri

6 October 2012 from 11.00am

Trafalgar Square, London 

The Japan Foundation will be holding a stall at the Japan Matsuri, London’s annual celebration of Japanese culture.

Come and visit us to learn more about what we can offer to learners and teachers of Japanese language, take part in a Japan Quiz and maybe even grab some Japanese goodies!

You can view more details about Japan Matsuri here.