Korean student Ahn Su-jin majoring in piano won the John Erskine award for Human Studies and Education at the Juilliard School's graduation ceremony held in New York May 24. The award goes to the most excellent student in academic achievement regardless of major.
Following the ceremony of awards to undergraduates and graduates, Ahn was called out again as the winner of Peter Mennin award that goes to the top student in Music. Joseph W. Polisi President of The Juilliard School noted that she was the first student to be awarded two prizes at the same time since the opening of the school.
Addressing her thoughts, Ahn attributed the result to her effort to enjoy all fields of arts besides of music while watching dance concerts and plays at school. Playing the piano from the age of 4, Ahn started receiving professional lessons at age 10 in 1990 when she flew to the United States with her father Ahn Jin-kee, the then Yonhap news agency correspondent to LA.
At 12, she won the 1992 Long Beach Mozart Festival award and had a concert with the Boston Symphony in 1996. After graduating from Walnut Hill near Boston in 1997, she went on to the Juilliard School to major piano. Winning the on campus concours last October, she played with the school's orchestra in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts of New York. "I will go on to the Juilliard Graduate School to be a pianist," said the promising young star.
(From New York, Kim Jae-ho, jaeho@chosun.com)
