Kai Ono, 20-year-old pianist and composer will share his original composition and improvisation with calrinest Dalton Tran and pianist Justin Syas.
6:45 Cocktail / 7:00 Music
$25/Premier, $20/General $15/Advance Free/Students
Kai Ono is a rising junior at the University of Kansas pursuing a Bachelor's of Music for Piano and Composition, currently studying with professors Dr. Scott McBride Smith for classical piano, TJ Martley for jazz piano, James Barnes for composition, and previously with Chizuko Asada and Satomi Otsubo, piano. Since winning the Young Artists' Beethoven Competition at San Jose and placing as a national finalist in the Music Teacher's National Association Duet Competition in Chicago, he has had the opportunity to play for artists such as Wynton Marsalis, Jon Kimura Parker, Alon Goldstein, Steven Wilson, and Martin Katz, won Downbeat Magazine's Best College Big Band award with the University of Kansas Jazz Ensemble I, and had his compositions played around the nation. He was given a special award at the Intersection of Jazz and Classical festival at West Virginia for his excellence in both genres. These days, Kai is spending his summer planning a road trip and designing a 3-d printer with some friends. We'll see how those go.
Dalton Tran is a clarinetist from Irvine, California. He is about to begin his second year at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is pursuing a degree in clarinet performance with a minor in accounting. His primary teachers have been Chris Kroesen and Ben Lulich, and he has also worked with clarinetists such as Yehuda Gilad, Michele Zukovsky, Burt Hara, Alcides Rodriguez, and Stephen Williamson. Throughout his career Mr. Tran has been a member of a number of prestigious ensembles, including the California All Southern and All State Bands and Orchestras, the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, the Irvine Unified School District Honor Orchestra, and the UCLA Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. Last summer, Dalton was selected to be a member of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America on its first tour across the United States, and served as principal clarinetist on the world premiere of Samuel Carl Adams’ Radial Play. While not playing clarinet or studying, Dalton enjoys watching YouTube videos, singing in the shower, and going through shenanigans with his friends.
Justin Syas, eighteen, has recently graduated from the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and will attend Biola University's Conservatory of Music in the fall of 2015, where he will study Piano Performance. An avid competitor, he has received First Prizes in the National Association of Negro Musicians Scholarship Competition, the Los Angeles Young Musicians Awards Competition, the Sierra Madre Dan Stover Music Competition, and the "So you Think You Have Talent" First Community Music Competition, and Third prize in the Omega Music Competition. In conjunction with studying piano under Natalie Dalschaert, Justin also practices music theory and orchestration with Thomas Sharp and has experimented in composition and completed solo and chamber works and written for full orchestra. In his free time, Justin enjoys riding his electric unicycle, learning Mandarin Chinese, and reading and writing poetry. Justin is also a Summa Cum Laude and Presidential Honors Recipient and, in the future, along with music, plans to study philosophy and pursue a career in law.