Simone Deleon-Jones, Annamarie Arai, Yasmeen Al-Mazeedi and Eliott Ephrati are All-Stars. But rather than feeling the adrenaline rush from a last-minute goal or emerging victorious in a championship, the four devote their time and energy to a surprising instrument: their violins.
Tonight, UCLA Philharmonia will feature works performed by student soloists, aptly titled “All-Stars” because of the competitive selection process. The concert will be held in Schoenberg Hall and will also mark the eighth time All-Star performers have graced the stage since the program’s inception.
The All-Star program features performances by nine soloists ranging from undergraduate second-years to graduate students from the instrumental music section of UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music.
Yasmeen Al-Mazeedi, a second-year violin performance student, said the process was overseen by a panel of judges who selected the All-Stars from a group of approximately 50 instrumental music performance students in a competitive audition.
The program’s benefit lies in how students gain motivation to improve from their peers and have the opportunity to highlight their talents, Al-Mazeedi said.
“It’s always exciting because every year you see your classmates performing who won the competition the year before,” Al-Mazeedi said. “You think, ‘Oh, I kind of want to try it out and see how it goes,’ and that’s why I decided to audition.”
The soloists will perform pieces they auditioned with, giving them a chance to hone their skills for the concert and granting them more time to perfect the pieces. By choosing their own pieces, the performers add extra emotional and personal dynamics to the concert.
Eliott Ephrati, a fourth-year Design | Media Arts and violin perfomance student who will play Pablo de Sarasate’s “Zigeunerweisen”, said the piece and its composer hold a significant meaning in his life and have influenced his playing style.
“I’m a French Jew and the piece is very gypsy-esque, so I can incorporate Jewish-inspired slides or the kind of things I like to do when I play Jewish pieces into the piece,” Ephrati said. “It’s a gypsy piece, so it correlates to my background and to the style.”
Because the program is the culmination of hours upon hours of work devoted to the music by the soloists, Al-Mazeedi, who will perform Tchaikovsky’s “Méditation”, said playing the piece so much over the course of the year allowed her to discover new qualities about the music.
“A lot of people say that they can see parallels between my life and how the piece is structured,” Al-Mazeedi said.
“The first part is really sad and solemn and lost and the second part is happy and cheerful, and that’s kind of how I am. I’m off the walls most of the time, but I have times where I can be more serious, and the piece suits me that way.”
Simone Deleon-Jones, a graduate violin performance student who will play Paul Chihara’s “Love Music,” said her piece stands out in the solo-dominated program. Rather than performing by herself, she will be debuting “Love Music” on the stage with Antonio Pina, a graduate clarinet performance student who is also Deleon-Jones’s boyfriend.
“We played some of Chihara’s music in orchestra last year, and I found a piece for violin and clarinet, a combination you don’t usually find but it worked out because my boyfriend is a clarinetist,” Deleon-Jones said.
“My playing ‘Love Music’ with my boyfriend actually has nothing to do with the title. I think it’s really cliche and kind of funny, but I still fell in love with the piece.”
For Annamarie Arai, a fourth-year violin performance student, performing as a soloist with an orchestra backing her sound has been a valuable learning experience not only in improving her skills as a violinist, but also in overcoming certain weaknesses in her style and feeling confident about her performance.
“I have bad stage fright, but just the fact that I have to play this piece at such a high level forced me to step back and think, ‘What’s the big deal when it’s a great piece?,’” Arai said.
“I have so many friends in the orchestra and they’re all supportive and now, I think I have to embrace the fact that now, it’s actually happening, and it’s an amazing opportunity.”
Email Aiyar at saiyar@media.ucla.edu.