Online Concerts
Dear Friend of the Orchestra,
Our lives are moved inside and on-line because of COVID 19. With public concerts now closed, we miss you as our
audience in Culver City, and Marina del Rey, sharing the music we present. In our efforts to adapt to the continuing
safer at home requirements, we embark on sharing on-line concerts of musicians who are members, friends,
associates, and concerto competition winners of the Orchestra. We hope these outstanding musical events will help to
carry us through these times until we are once again able to present live concerts.
Next Event: Saturday December 19, at 6:45pm - Rufus Choi, Piano
Rufus Choi’s exhilarating performance of Bach’s Chaconne in D minor (arr. Busoni) and Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition will premiere on the Culver City Symphony Orchestra YouTube channel on
Saturday December 19, 2020. A pre-concert talk with Rufus Choi and Frank Fetta, the Orchestra’s Musical
Director and Conductor, will start at 6:45pm, and the recital will start at approximately 7:10pm.
For a preview of the recital, see PREVIEW
The premiere will be available on December 19 at PREMIERE
ABOUT RUFUS CHOI:
Rufus Choi is a long-time friend of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra. He first performed with the Orchestra as a winner of our Parness Concerto Competition and again, many years later, as soloist at our summer season concerts in Marina del Rey. In recent years, several of his students have followed in his footsteps, performing with the Orchestra as Parness Competition winners.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Choi has always felt that his American birth and Korean heritage have imparted an international aura and underlying wanderlust to his musical career, which is defined by passionate, sold-out performances in numerous countries across the globe.
Rufus Choi has performed widely around the United States, including solo recitals at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York City. In Los Angeles, he has performed at venues including Walt Disney Concert Hall, Zipper Hall, and Pasadena’s Ambassador Auditorium. Internationally, Choi has performed in music festivals across Europe, including the prestigious Salzburg Festival in Austria, and around the world.
Unusually for an American pianist, Choi identifies strongly with the Russian school of technique and artistry. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School (BM, MM) in New York City, where he studied with Oxana Yablonskaya, and the Musik Hochschule in Hannover, Germany, where he studied with Vladimir Krainev. He has been awarded prizes in major competitions in the US, Europe, South Korea, Taiwan and Mexico.
In addition to his passion for performing, Mr. Choi also believes that an essential part of being a musician is sharing his knowledge with students who love music.
Rufus Choi is a Steinway Artist, and this recital was performed on a Steinway & Sons piano.
http://rufuschoi.com/
Previous Events:
On Friday July 31, at 8:00pm, Orchestra Music Director and Conductor Frank Fetta collaborated with cellist
Ruslan Biryukov to present a program produced by the Redlands Bowl of Cool Classics for Cello and Piano, with well-
known works by Rossini, Gershwin, Fauré, Rachmaninoff, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The event was presented by The Redlands Bowl and can be viewed on
•Their YouTube channel LINK •Their Facebook page LINK •For more information LINK
On Saturday, July 25 at 5:00pm, musicians from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra presented LACO’s
second SummerFest concert. Principal Clarinet Joshua Ranz performed Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet with a string
quartet that includes our principal guest conductor, Andrew Shulman, as cellist.
For those of you who were able to attend our CCSO May, 2019 concert at Covenant Presbyterian Church, this will be
very familiar – on that occasion Joshua performed the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets with almost the same
group of string players.This concert is presented by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and is available live on their
YouTube channel Mozart and Facebook page.
We look forward to the day when we can meet again.
Board of Directors
SoCal Symphony Society
Stephen Turk, President
Culver City Symphony Orchestra