Three leading musicians team up for performance

Publication Date

The Kim-Watkins-Chien Piano Trio performs on Sunday, Feb. 25 at 3 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.

Violinist Soovin Kim, cellist Paul Watkins (Emerson Quartet), and pianist Gloria Chien join together for a special program of piano trios spanning three centuries. The afternoon features Beethoven’s E-flat major Trio, Op. 70, No. 2, Vermont composer Pierre Jalbert’s Trio No. 2, and Brahms’s classic C-major Trio, Op. 87.

Soovin Kim won first prize in the Paganini International Competition. Subsequent awards included the Henryk Szeryng Career Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Borletti-Bui­toni Trust Award. Kim has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco, Indianapolis, and Baltimore symphonies, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, among others.

Paul Watkins has performed with worldwide including concerto appearances with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony, and the BBC Symphony, and his U.S. concerto debut with the Colorado Symphony. A dedicated chamber musician, Watkins was a member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 to 2013, and joined the Emerson String Quartet in May 2013. In 2014 he was appointed artistic director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit.

A native of Taiwan, Gloria Chien made her orchestral debut at the age of 16 with the Boston Symphony. A regular performer at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and other series around the country, she founded String Theory in 2009, a chamber music series in downtown Chattanooga, TN. She is an associate professor at Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn.

Individual tickets are $30. All students are free.