Aurista Chamber Music

The Aurista Chamber Music brings together the aspiring careers of highly gifted concert artists into intimate and energetic musical collaboration. Aurista members violinist San San Lee, cellist Amy Kim, and pianist Thomas Osuga explore established and emerging concert repertory from near and far. Aurista embraces a vast range of styles and genres with repertoire chosen for its rich content, emotional impact, and musical challenge with a range extending from Bach to Cole Porter and beyond. Most recently, Aurista Chamber Music has been awarded the 2006-07 residency at New York University's Music and Performing Arts Professions in the Steinhardt School and the November 2006 residency at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio in the Dana School of Music.

This concert features pianist Thomas Osuga, professor at the Mannes College of Music, who is also Music Director/Curator for the complete “On the Rise” concert series. Thomas is piano faculty at Pianophoria (summer program) at Hunter College and the 2004-2007 Piano Liaison (Co-Chair) at Mannes Preparatory Division. Nominated by Cleveland JACL for Japanese American of the Biennium, numerous talks and residencies, Osuga brings fresh perspectives to both the music of Aurista, as well as his curatorial work for the Puffin.

As violinist and co-founder of Aurista Chamber Music, San San Lee received her B.M. from the Oberlin College-Conseratory and M.M. from the Juilliard School under scholarships. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Ms. Lee has performed as a soloist and chamber musician across the U.S., Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia, and holds teaching positions at the School for Strings and Juilliard's Music Advancement Program, serving as their first strings chair.

In her homeland of Korea, Amy Kim was acclaimed "a new, young talent." Ms. Kim won first prize in every competition she entered including the prestigious Dong-A Music Competition and enjoyed an active career performing with all the major orchestras while still in her teens. During her career, Ms. Kim has developed a varied and impressive repertoire. One of her most impressive characteristics is her uncanny ability to interpret all musical styles from Bach to Webern. She has mastered all the major cello concertos, sonatas, and chamber music repertoire, and her virtuosity and expressiveness are unparalleled. Amy Kim is a graduate of the Juilliard School where she studied with Channing Robbins and Harvey Shapiro. She is currently on the faculty of the preparatory division of the Mannes College of Music in Manhattan. Ms. Kim is playing on a Lorenzo Ventapane cello made in the 18th century.

The name "AURISTA CHAMBER MUSIC" was created by its members for its implication of aural sound with overtone references to the periodic table's symbol for gold, "Au". "Aurista" is thus interpreted as "golden sound".