CONTACT: Brad White
Marketing and Publicity Manager
Center for the Arts, Pepperdine University
24255 Pacific Coast Hwy, Malibu, CA 90263
(310) 506-4055
brad.white@pepperdine.edu
BOX OFFICE: (310) 506-4522
http://arts.pepperdine.edu/

Photos available upon request

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY
CENTER FOR THE ARTS
2010-11 Stotsenberg Recital Series

presents

RAN JIA, PIANO
 
Sunday, March 20, 2011, 2 p.m.
Raitt Recital Hall, Pepperdine University
24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, CA

Pepperdine University's 2010-11 Stotsenberg Recital Series concludes with a performance by pianist Ran Jia at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 20, at Raitt Recital Hall on Pepperdine's Malibu campus.

The program will include Mozart's Twelve Variations in C, K. 265, on "Ah, vous dirai-je Maman"; five pieces from Prokofiev's Visions Fugitive; Debussy's L'Isle joyeuse and Images, Book I; and Schubert's Piano Sonata in A Minor, D. 845.

Tickets, priced at $25 for the public and $10 for full-time Pepperdine students, are available now by calling (310) 506-4522. Tickets are also available through Ticketmaster at (800) 982-2787. Information online: http://arts.pepperdine.edu/

At 22, Jia is already regarded as a striking musician with unusual natural abilities. Chinese composer Tan Dun hailed her as a "piano poet with dramatic skill in music making."

Born in Chengdu, Sichuan, China, Jia began studying piano at the age of 3. She made her solo debut in 1995 and since has performed publicly in Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu, Fuzhou, and Xiamen in China.

Her numerous awards include the Special Prize for her performance of a Mozart sonata in the Second Minnesota International Piano-e-Competition in 2004; the Silver Medal in the National Cultural Ministry Dandelion Youth Arts Competition in Nanjing, China, in 2001; First Prize and the Osaka Mayor's Prize in the Shanghai-Osaka Chinese and Japanese Friendship Youth Piano Competition in 2000; First Prize in the Sichuan Youth Piano Competition in 1998; and Second Prize in the National Xinghai Cup Piano Competition in 1998. Piano master Fou Ts'ong praised her talent by saying that she has "an amazing natural feeling for music."

In 2004 Jia played a recital at the He Luting Concert Hall at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Her recital was received with great enthusiasm by the audience and the media alike. Oriental TV broadcast two documentaries featuring Jia's life as a young artist, including her live performance at the Conservatory. In November 2005 she made her debut at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall with her teacher, Gary Graffman, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's at a "Junior/Senior Concert" organized by the Musicians Emergency Fund, Inc. Jia has performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467, under Maestro Li Jian.

Recent highlights include a return, sold-out concert at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and a performance of two Mozart concerti with the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra at the Shanghai Concert Hall.

Jia has been featured in a live concert on Chicago's classical music station WFMT as well as a worldwide broadcast on WQXR in New York of a concert in honor of Thelonious Monk's 90th birthday, for which she was the only classical pianist invited to perform.

Jia made an acclaimed European recital debut at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr in summer 2008 playing two Schubert sonatas. The press commented, "She refines each moment, each development, each transition of a melody to the next...With marvelous impressive elegance in touch she feels her way into Schubert's language--sometimes with dolorous sweetness, sometimes with thunderous rage, then again with a sparkling style, to then go back to a Beethovian energy. There are no fractures, no stutters, no technical hurdles--with this pianist the structures and sounds flow naturally on [their] own...Tremendous."

Jia also recently made her Vancouver Symphony Orchestra subscription debut under Maestro Bramwell Tovey, performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No.12 in A Major, K. 414. For a recent concert at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, she performed Tan Dun's Eight Memories in Watercolor and Schubert's Sonata in C Minor, D. 958.

In summer 2010 Jia toured the southern cities of China, performing Saint-Saens' Concerto No. 2 with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra under Guoyong Zhang. She made her debut at the Miami International Piano Festival in May 2010; this recital was recorded and recently released on VAI International as a DVD.

Recent and future engagements include performances at the opening of the Miami International Piano Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, and with the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

Jia is currently studying with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her father, Professor Daqun Jia, is one of the leading composers in China and Dean of the Graduate Study Programs at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

Now in its 18th season, the Stotsenberg Recital Series is funded by Dorothy D. Stotsenberg of Malibu. Recitals are usually presented in the acoustically superior and intimate 118-seat Raitt Recital Hall, donated to Pepperdine by the late Broadway star John Raitt and his wife, Rosemary, who co-founded the Pepperdine Center for the Arts Guild.

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