Arts & Entertainment

McLean Teenager Wins Concerto Competition

Jillian Khoo, 14, is honored by the DC Youth Orchestra Program.

McLean teenager Jillian Khoo is the winner of the DC Youth Orchestra Program’s Concerto Competition.

Khoo, 14, is in the eighth grade advanced academic program at Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church. She began her violin studies at the age of three, joined DCYOP’s Youth Orchestra at 11, and today is the youth orchestra’s concertmaster. She performed Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the youth orchestra last year at the Kennedy Center.

Khoo is the first recipient of the David Gordon Louis Daniel Foundation music scholar award, which has supported her violin studies with June Huang since 2008. In June 2012, the National Symphony Orchestra made an exception and accepted Khoo into the National Symphony Orchestra Youth Fellowship Program for high school musicians. She is one of the youngest musicians accepted into the program.

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Khoo has participated in the Philadelphia International Music Festival and studied solo violin performance with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has performed in master classes for Pamela Frank, Eugene Drucker, Kimberly Fisher, Alexander Kerr, Noah Geller, Jenny Oaks Baker and John Kendall.

Khoo is also an accomplished pianist, winning the Viola Hartman Piano Competition, and has received several awards in the NVMTA Piano Concerto Competition. She studies piano with Irina Kats.

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The DC Youth Orchestra Program’s Youth Orchestra will perform at 4 p.m. March 3 at THEARC, 1901 Mississippi Ave., SE. Khoo is a featured performer. The concert is free, and no tickets are required.

The youth orchestra will be led by Maestro Jesus Manuel Berard and perform the Overture from Mozart's triumphant opera Don Giovanni, Max Bruch's G minor Violin Concerto and Symphony No. 6, the 'Little C Major', by Franz Schubert. Experience the instruments up close from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the lobby.

DCYOP, working with American University students’ Encore Instruments project, will collect instruments at the concert to donate to the band program at Johnson Middle School, which is near THEARC. The goal of Encore instruments is to get 100 instruments donated and raise $5,000 to support the music programs at Johnson Middle School and Fillmore Arts Center by March 11.

More than 600 students a year ages 4½ to 18 from Washington, Maryland, and Virginia participate in DC Youth Orchestra Program. More than 30 faculty members teach nearly 100 classes and rehearsals a week in violin, viola, cello, string bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, trumpet, french horn, trombone, tuba, percussion, harp, guitar and recorder.

For more information about DC Youth Orchestra Program or the concert, visit www.dcyop.org or call 202-698-0123. DCYOP is on Facebook and Twitter @DCYOPmusic.


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