Two Tri-City high school students have been given chances of a lifetime to advance their music careers.
Chan Lee, 16, a Grade 11 international baccalaureate student at Port Moody secondary, was recently asked to return to the National Youth Orchestra of Canada this summer.
And, last week, Eva Pekarova, a Grade 11 student at Terry Fox secondary in Port Moody, flew to New York City to perform her original composition at the Lincoln Centre.
Pekarova was given the opportunity after winning the Young Composers' Showcase Concert Festival, an international music competition.
The 17-year-old Slovakian native, who officially started to write music last year, entered her piano piece Journey of the Danube River in G-minor, an homage to "a place I love very much," she said in an email interview. "Though it is a calm river at the present time, its vibrant and distinct past is what the song was written for, particularly for the passing of the years for the once-dynamic river."
Pekarova said she penned the first 30 seconds of the work as an experiment, got writer's block but wrapped it up in four days to meet the contest deadline.
While in New York City with her father, Pekarova said she plans to visit landmarks, including the famed Julliard School of Music, located across the street from Lincoln Center.
Playing Lincoln "will truly be a great experience for me and I can't wait to see it for myself," she said last Thursday. "It's something I've only dreamed about and worked towards but actually performing there didn't seem like an option that would be available so soon after I started composing."
As for her post-secondary goals, Pekarova said she plans to stick with composing and performing.
"I could never really imagine doing anything other than music," she said. "My whole family is full of artists. In fact, my grandmother's great-grandfather, Zoltan Sandor, was great friends with the famous composer Franz Lehar, whom he collaborated with and helped write the lyrics for Lehar's operas."
Fox music teacher Ryan Cho said Pekarova is a flautist in the school's concert band, a pianist in a school jazz ensemble and a singer in the school's concert and vocal jazz choirs (to hear her music, visit www.reverbnation.com/evapekarova).
As for Lee, he was one six musicians to win a $4,000 scholarship to play with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada - making him the youngest, and only violinist, to clinch the cash award.
Lee, who picked up the instrument at the age of six, performed with the orchestra last summer during its 50th anniversary session and represented Vancouver as one of the concert masters; during the national tour, he played the tricky solo in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade at the Chan Centre at UBC.
"This year, I will be concert master again for the 51st session, leading the orchestra for the training session in July and the tour in August," he said in an email. "I am looking forward to spending my summer at NYOC as last year's experience was so enjoyable and educational.
"My dream is to become concertmaster of a prestigious orchestra," he said.
