Press Releases

Sejong to Present the Eighth Annual Benefit

Secretary-General of United Nations H.E. Ban, Ki-moon to be Honored
Newscaster Paula Zahn is the Emcee & Guest Soloist

7:30pm, Sunday, December 16, 2007 at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall

New York, NY – The New York-based international string orchestra SEJONG announced its star-studded Eighth Annual Benefit to take place at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 16, 2007 at Zankel Hall, hosted by American newscaster Paula Zahn, a long-time friend of the ensemble. This year’s Benefit Concert is entitled “Around the World in Eighty Minutes” and will honor H.E. Ban, Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations. Guest artists will include the Juilliard String Quartet, soprano Hyunah Yu, violist Paul Neubauer, and Paula Zahn on the cello. Two SEJONG members Richard O’Neill and Yura Lee, recipients of the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006 and 2007, respectively, will also be featured.

SEJONG, represented by fourteen talented young musicians from nine different nations, is uniquely diverse and will befittingly honor H.E. Ban, Ki-moon who succeeded Kofi Annan as the Eighth Secretary-General of United Nations in January 2007. Mr. Ban has been an avid supporter of SEJONG since its inception in 1995 as well as various aspects of the arts during his diplomatic posts around the globe. 

SEJONG(Artistic Director, Hyo Kang), “a top-notch conductor-less string orchestra” (Washington Post) is highly committed to expanding limited repertoire of existing string music and to introducing interesting works to the audience. The Benefit Concert program, “Around the World in Eighty Minutes,” reflects such unique efforts by including new works by American composer Eric Ewazen and Taiwanese composer Gordon Chin. SEJONG commissioned Ewazen to write a special piece for Paula Zahn on cello and Sejong for this occasion. Gordon Chin’s Summer Grasses, Haiku for Voice and Strings, is a dramatic work which weaves in Japanese haiku into the composer’s signature use of attention-grabbing string timbre. The piece will be performed by soprano Hyunah Yu. The musical program of the evening will also feature more traditional works such as Brandenburg Concerto and Cantatas by Bach and other works by M. Haydn, Elgar, Dvořák, and Piazzolla.