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Read more about Monteux's
Guest Conducting Faculty, Dr. Chung Park:
Chung Park is a nationally recognized conductor, music educator and editor. He was appointed conductor of the award-winning St. Olaf Orchestra starting in the fall of 2022 and St. Olaf College’s Philharmonia Orchestra for fall 2023. Dr. Park maintains an active schedule as a guest conductor on both the professional and educational levels, with engagements including the Sarasota Orchestra, Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra and student honor orchestras in Tennessee, North Dakota, North Carolina, Utah, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Washington State, Florida and Georgia. Dr. Park has given masterclasses at top institutions like the Gifted Music School in Salt Lake City and presents on string pedagogy and music education for teachers throughout the United States. Deeply engaged in the life of the American music education community, Dr. Park has given hundreds of clinics in schools throughout the United States for all levels and ensemble types. Internationally preeminent publisher Bärenreiter-Verlag released the Six Suites for Violoncello Solo by J.S. Bach transcribed for viola in a new edition prepared by Dr. Park in the spring of 2023.
Ensembles Dr. Park has led have received wide critical acclaim. Eminent composer Steve Reich described his conducting as “revelatory” and exclaimed after listening to a performance of his work Proverb – ”Now I know it can rock!” Critic Lawrence Johnson of the Miami Herald hailed his performance of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale as “masterfully directed” and his conducting of Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun as “lucid and refined.” The Frost Symphony Orchestra/Park recording of works by Alan Hovhaness on Centaur Records has received excellent reviews, most notably from Gramophone Magazine, who proclaimed that the disc provides “hours of listening enjoyment.” Classics Today gave the album “10/10” for both engineering and quality of performance. The Orlando Sentinel wrote that the UCF Symphony Orchestra produced “rich waves of sound” during their performance of Oklahoma! at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
Dr. Park comes to St. Olaf College most recently from the University of Central Florida, where he was Director of Orchestras and String Music Education. Prior appointments include positions at Appalachian State University, the Idaho State-Civic Symphony, Idaho State University, Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, as well as the faculties of the Universities of Chicago, North Dakota and Indiana University- South Bend. Park also served as conductor of the Western Michigan University Cham¬ber Orchestra and Opera Theater and as music director of youth orchestras in South Bend, IN; Grand Forks, ND; Orlando, FL and Miami, FL.
Dr. Park’s primary musical studies were completed at the Peabody Conservatory and the University of Miami, where he received a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree as a student of renowned conductor and composer Thomas Sleeper. Dr. Park was the recipient of the Presser Foundation Music Prize, the UM Alumni Association Student of Distinction Award and was inducted into the Pi Kappa Lambda music honors fraternity while at the University of Miami. Additionally, Park studied viola privately in Hannover, Germany with Hatto Beyerle of the Alban Berg Quartet. Dr. Park is an alumni of the Monteux School & Music Festival ('99) where he studied with Michael Jinbo.
Further studies include the Robert Abramson Manhattan Dalcroze-Eurhythmics Institute, Aspen Music Festival, Pierre Monteux School, South Carolina Conductor’s Institute, Tafelmusik Institute in Toronto, Ontario, and the International Festival-Institute at Roundtop, Texas. Dr. Park has conducted in masterclasses for Marin Alsop, Andrey Boreyko, Per Brevig, Raymond Harvey, Catherine Comet, Pascal Verrot and Jorge Mester.
A lifelong learner, Dr. Park works with Marianne Ploger (Associate Professor Emerita of Music Perception and Cognition, Vanderbilt University) on topics related to psycho-acoustics and Robert Gjerdingen (Professor Emeritus of Music Theory, Northwestern University) on the compositional techniques known as partimento to bolster his personal work and provide his students with the best possible pedagogies. Dr. Park strives to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by his connection to a top liberal arts college, taking Latin I during his first year on faculty, with plans to take Latin II and many other courses in the years ahead. He is an ardent believer in the value of a liberal arts education, the breadth and depth it provides, and the possibilities inherent in this education to address the whole person.
Dr. Park draws inspiration for his work from a wide variety of sources, including conductors such as Thomas Sleeper, John Eliot Gardiner and Simon Rattle. His favorite authors include His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Pema Chödrön, Thich Nhat Hanh and Wendell Berry.
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