Amara Trio to Perform at Chamber Music Festival

April 28, 2024

By James Carder

The Amara Trio – the Lerman Gold-Prize winners of the 2024 Chesapeake Music International Chamber Music Competition for Young Professionals – will perform at the Chamber Music Festival on Friday, June 14th. The six Festival concerts (June 7–15) are held at the beautiful Ebenezer Theater, 17 S. Washington St., in Easton, Maryland. Tickets are available at https://chesapeakemusic.org/.

The Amara Trio’s three accomplished young musicians – Christina Nam, violin, Nagyeom Jang, cello, and Kevin Jansson, piano – will perform Rebecca Clarke’s 1921 Piano Trio and Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1945 Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor.

“We chose to program the Clarke and Shostakovich trios together because they offer two unique and complementary explorations of the darker parts of the human psyche. The Clarke trio delves into the realm of dreams, fantasy and, at times, mysticism, where the laws of nature and logic no longer rule and there is no limit to both the horrors and joys the imagination can create. The Shostakovich trio seems to be the composer’s way of reconciling himself with the horrors of the 1940s as well as his own tragic losses.”

The Amara Trio formed in the summer of 2023, drawn together by their love of the chamber music they could play together and their joy in sharing this music with others, including community engagements in hospitals and retirement communities. They are pursuing their master’s degrees at The Juilliard School as an Honors Chamber Music Group under the guidance of Laurie Smukler and Joel Krosnick. Although still in their ‘20s, the Amara Trio members are already established, accomplished musicians.

Violinist Christina Jihee Nam, a child prodigy from West Chester, Ohio, at age 9 was performing Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor with the Cincinnati Symphony. In 2017, she excelled in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major with the Cleveland Orchestra. In 2018, Nam was invited to participate in the prestigious Menuhin Competition in Geneva, Switzerland, where she was chosen as soloist to perform Saint-Saëns’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso with the Orchestre du Conservatoire de Musique. Nam has studied with Donald Weilerstein and Catherine Cho at The Juilliard School.

Cellist Nagyeom Jang, another child prodigy, was born in South Korea and moved to New York to study at The Julliard School. At age 8, Jang won the Grand Prize in the Little Mozarts division of the Crescendo International Competition at Carnegie Hall and was subsequently invited to perform in Austria with the Salzburg Chamber Orchestra. Jang has received numerous awards, including a Special Prize at the 2015 9th International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in Novosibirsk and First Prize and Top Prize at the 2017 International Grande Music Competition in New York. She has studied with Joel Krosnick and Minhye Clara Kim at The Juilliard School and has performed with pianist Robert McDonald.

Despite his passion for traditional Irish music, 24-year-old, Irish-born Kevin Jansson studied both classical piano and violin at the CIT Cork School of Music. In 2016 he was the youngest participant and joint winner of the Prix Thierry Scherz at the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad Festival, Switzerland, which led to his solo piano recording debut in 2017. Also in that year, he was Grand Prize recipient in both piano and violin in New York’s International Shining Star Competition and made his Carnegie Hall debut playing both Beethoven’s 3rd piano concerto and Mendelssohn’s violin concerto to sensational reviews. In 2018, he received First Prize at the 1st Jeune Chopin – International Youth Competition in Martigny, Switzerland. Jansson studied piano with Veda Kaplinsky and Julian Martin at The Juilliard School.