Huntingdon Valley Violinist Returns to Glencairn Museum for Performance

When violinist Ben Odhner returns to in Bryn Athyn Sunday, April 29, concertgoers will see just how far the musician has come – from the guy who first played the museum’s Great Hall as a teen to a college graduate now studying with a top instructor.

The concert is set for 3 p.m. at the museum, 1001 Cathedral Rd.

In 2007, when he was 18-years-old and a student at the Academy of the New Church Secondary School in Bryn Athyn, Odhner performed for the first time at Glencairn with older brother, Nathan, on the French horn. Later that year, he graduated from ANC and entered the Cleveland Institute of Music in Ohio where, over the next four years he exceled as a performer, and captured numerous awards. He graduated from the prestigious school in May 2011 with a degree in violin performance.

Now, at age 23, he is studying for a master’s degree in violin performance with Paul Kantor at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Kantor, a graduate of the Julliard School, has been chair of the string department at the University of Michigan, and on the faculties of Julliard, the New England Conservatory and Yale University.

The son of Sarah and the Rev. Grant Odhner of Huntingdon Valley, Odhner first picked up the violin at age five. By the time he graduated from ANC, he had turned his skill into a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute.

He won his first competition at age 13 and appeared as a soloist with numerous ensembles including the Ashland Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Institute Orchestra and Warminster Symphony Orchestra. A fellowship recipient at the Aspen Music Festival and School, he has been concertmaster of the Aspen Sinfonia, the Aspen Concert Orchestra and other festival ensembles.

Odhner is a member of the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and CityMusic, a professional chamber orchestra that performs throughout northeast Ohio. He also has performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Columbus Symphony Orchestra. He was selected to participate in the New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall in 2008 and 2009 and participated in the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra, led by Michael Tilson Thomas, which performed at Carnegie Hall in April 2009. Odhner was featured on NPR's From the Top in 2007 as a member of Settlement Music School's Gray Charitable Trust Piano Trio and, from 2004 to 2006, he was the associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra. He has been invited to participate this summer in the Banff Music Festival in Canada.

Accompanying Odhner will be Chorong Park, a post-graduate collaborative piano fellow at Bard College Conservatory of Music, who holds an artist diploma from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a master's degree in collaborative piano from the Eastman School of Music, and degree in solo piano performance from Seoul National University in Korea.

Born in Busan, South Korea, she began her piano studies at age six. Last year, she served as a staff pianist at the Aspen Music Festival and School and was an instrumental fellow in collaborative there in 2010. She will participate in the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara this summer.

On Odhner and Park’s program are selections from Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 119 by Francis Poulenc; Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen; Violin Sonata no. 1 in G major, Op. 78 by Johannes Brahms; Valse Sentimentale, Op. 51 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; and Introduction and Tarantella, Op. 43 by Pablo de Sarasate.

Admission to the concert is $15; $10 for museum members and students with ID.

For more information, call Glencairn at 267-502-2600 or visit www.glencairnmuseum.org.