Violinist Miki Nagahara was awarded first prize in the 2011 Feinberg Youth Competition.
Sponsored by Brocktonians Attorney Kenneth and Diane Feinberg, the competition recognizes students of exceptional musical talent.
Nagahara, a resident of Andover, will be performing Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G minor with the Brockton Symphony Orchestra conducted by BrSO Music Director and PA Symphony/Chamber Orchestra Director, James M. Orent. The program will also include Brahms’ beloved Symphony No. 2 in D major, and Schubert’s Rosamunde Overture.
This concert is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 28 at 3 p.m. in the auditorium of Oliver Ames High School in North Easton. To purchase tickets, call 508-588-3841.
Nagahara is 17 years old and has been playing the violin for 10 years. She studies with Peter Zazofsky and has also studied with the late Roman Totenberg, John Holland, and Esther DeGrunigen. She is currently a senior at Phillips Academy on scholarship.
Nagahara is a longtime member of the Boston Youth Symphony, the senior orchestra of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras. She has participated since the 2003-2004 season, when she started out in the Preparatory String Orchestra.
In the summer of 2008, she toured Germany and the Czech Republic with the Boston Youth Symphony, and performed at the renowned Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany, and in 2010 she toured Great Britain. She now serves as a concertmaster of the orchestra, serving in that capacity for performances of Verdi’s Falstaff and Brahms’s Deutsche Requiem.
Nagahara won the first prize of the Feinberg Competition of the Brockton Symphony in 2011, and was named the Grand Prize Winner of the Dana Hall Chamber Music Competition in 2012.
She was also runner-up of the 2008 Ehlers Young Artist Competition of the Concord Orchestra as well as the runner-up for the Walden Chamber Players Youth Competition in the same year. She participated in the Northeastern Junior District Festival as concertmistress in 2009.
Nagahara has attended summers at Greenwood Music Camp, Orford Arts Centre, and Heifetz Institute, where she studied with Masuko Ushioda, James Buswell, and Julie Yoon of the Chiara String Quartet.
At school, she participates in the school orchestras, as well as in chamber music and was recently named co-president of the school handbell choir. She coordinates and teaches in a community service program called Andover-Lawrence Strings, in which Phillips Academy music students teach children from Lawrence how to play violin, cello, and piano.
