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Newly-named 2008 Gilmore Young Artist Naomi Kudo was born in Washington D.C. to Japanese-Korean parents. Now twenty-one years old, Kudo began studying piano at the age of four in Chicago. Her formal studies include instruction by Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago, and with Kum-Sing Lee of the Vancouver Music Academy. Kudo is currently continuing her undergraduate studies at the Juilliard School as a student of Yoheved Kaplinsky.

 

Kudo made her orchestral debut at age sixteen performing Tchaikovsky's First Concerto with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and, later that same year, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Orchestra Hall playing Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain.

 

The recipient of the Chopin Prize and consecutive winner of the 2007 and 2008 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition at the Juilliard School, Kudo has received international recognition in several competitions: as the only American finalist at the Fifteenth International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw (2005); Second Prize at the Seventh National Chopin Competition of the United States (2005); First Prize at the Ninth Oberlin International Piano Competition (2003); and First Prize at the Fifty-Third National Student Music Concours of Japan (1999). She is also an avid chamber musician, and has won the silver medal at the 2003 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

 

She also received the 2003 I.M.A. Music Award of Japan and a Level I Award at the 2005 National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts' Arts Recognition and Talent Search. Named a prestigious 2004 Davidson Fellow Laureate, she was awarded a $50,000 scholarship by the Davidson Institute of Talent Development.

 

In September 2007 Kudo opened the eighth season of The Gilmore's Rising Stars Recital Series and performed in the Juilliard Bachauer Competition Winners' concert, broadcast live on WQXR Radio in New York. In December 2007 she was chosen to take part in the weeklong Emanuel Ax Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshop, culminating in public master classes and concerts in Weill Recital Hall. In spring of 2008, she made numerous recital and concerto appearances at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival.

 

Highlights of her career include recital, concerto, and chamber music performances at the 2001 Fifty-Sixth International Chopin Festival in Duszniki-Zdroj, Poland; the 2001 "New Names of the 21st Century" International Music Festival in Russia; the 2002 Nagoya International Youth Music Festival in Japan; the Aspen Music Festival; Chopin's birth house "Zelazowa Wola"; the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago; the Stradivarius Museum in Cremona; the Salle Cortot in Paris; the Musikverein in Vienna; the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall in New York; and the 2003 Opening Night Gala Celebration for the Music Institute of Chicago honoring conductor Sir Andrew Davis.

 

Kudo's appearances with orchestra include the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Reno Philharmonic, and the Ars Viva, Montgomery, Fort Collins, Northbrook, Everett, Oak Park, Southwest Michigan, and Fukui (in Japan) orchestras. She has been featured on WFMT Chicago radio's "Impromptu," "Introductions," and WQXR New York radio's "Young Artists Showcase" programs; and she is a four-time scholarship recipient from the Chopin Foundation of the United States.

 

Kudo is featured in Defining Chopin, a film documentary about four American pianists competing in the 2005 Fifteenth International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.