Call her Naomi: Gilmore Young Artist Kudo makes some changes

Call her Naomi: Gilmore Young Artist Kudo makes some changes
Kalamazoo Gazette
April 13th, 2008
Elizabeth Clark

 

 

   Savvy followers of the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival may think they spy a mistake when they see the name of pianist Naomi Kudo.


   Kudo, one of two 2008 Gilmore Young Artist award recipients (the other is Adam Golka), changed her professional name from Rachel Kudo -- or Rachel Naomi Kudo, which she also has used -- to Naomi Kudo this winter.


   "My parents had expressed that they would like me to maybe use my middle name because that's also my Japanese name," Kudo said by phone from her New York City home. "In the past, I've usually used both names, which is confusing because some people assume because of my ethnicity that I'm half-Caucasian or an Asian-Jewish pianist (she's actually of Korean-Japanese descent) because both of my names are Jewish. They thought it would be easier if I chose just one."


   She expects to answer to both for quite some time.


   "Everybody still calls me Rachel," she said. "I think it's always been my parents who called me Naomi. I'm really happy with anything as long as I can keep doing what I do and keep playing more music."


Recent excitement
   Most recently, Kudo, who attends the Juilliard School in New York City, performed in Vienna, Austria, as part of an exchange program between Juilliard, the National Conservatory of Paris and the University of Vienna for the Performing Arts.

   "There were five musicians each representing the three schools," Kudo said. "They wanted us to get to know each other and to play chamber music together, and we performed a concert in Vienna."
  
   Exploring the city that was such a destination location for baroque bigwigs was "really moving," the young artist said.

 

   "It was such a great experience," she said. "We got to really look around the city, and we also visited a lot of important musical sites: Beethoven's old house, Mozart's old house, the cemetery where Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and all these people were buried."

   Kudo said it was interesting to see the differences between European and American students.


   "It was really cool that, even though some of the other students didn't speak English very well when we started rehearsal, we got to communicate through our music," she said. "I think that was a common experience for all of us."


   Kudo also describes her Carnegie Hall chamber-music appearance in December 2007 as a career highlight. She appeared with a violinist from Juilliard.


   "We worked on Brahms violin sonatas with Emanuel Ax and David Zinman and also a clarinetist, Richard Stoltzman," she said. "That was like one of the most intense and amazing weeks, because every day we were coaching and playing and training and asking Mr. Ax and Mr. Zinman questions. It was also very touching because these busy and important people were really interested in helping us young artists out. I thought that was such an incredible thing."


Astonishing record

   Kudo's own career certainly qualifies as incredible. The pianist won the 2007 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, was the sole American finalist at the 2005 15th International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, earned second prize at the seventh National Chopin Competition (2005) in the U.S., is a 2004 Davidson Fellow Laureate and four-time scholarship recipient from the Chopin Foundation of the United States.

   She said she's thrilled at the possibility of rubbing shoulders with more stars during her Gilmore visit.
 
   "I was thinking of asking (festival Executive Director Dan Gustin) if I could meet Mitsuko Uchida," Kudo said. "She's one of my idols. That would be one thing that would be amazing. She and I are playing a recital on the same day about two hours apart. I was really hoping to make her recital."
 

   Kudo's schedule at the Gilmore includes a slot at the opening dinner on April 25, an Albion College appearance April 26, a Stetson Chapel recital April 28, a Calvin College performance April 29, a Battle Creek performance May 4 and a collaboration with the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra in Benton Harbor on May 11.

  
   Her solo recital performances will feature J.S. Bach's Overture in the French Style in B Minor, BWV 831; Carl Vine's Sonata No. 1; Ravel's "Sonatine"; and Schumann's "Carnaval, Op. 9." The symphonic collaboration in Benton Harbor will feature Mozart's Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467; and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade."


   For her opening dinner set, she said she plans to play short works and transcriptions that are "popular and easy to enjoy," including "The Flight of the Bumblebee."