Chee-Yun at Home in Cincinnati

   It'll be like "Auld Lang Syne" when violinist Chee-Yun performs with the Cincinnati Symphony Wednesday evening at Music Hall.
   She won't play the Robert Burns air heard everywhere on New Year's Eve. You'll hear Saint-Saens' "Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso" and Sarasate's "Zigeunerweisen" ("Gypsy Airs") instead.
   But the theme of remembrance fits. Chee-Yun, a busy international artist whose home base is Cincinnati, made her debut here with the Saint-Saens in a 1991 Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra concert with then- CSO associate conductor Keith Lockhart. (Lockhart became CCO music director in 1992 and conductor of the Boston Pops in 1995.)
   She has performed with the CSO three times, once with Russell and twice with CSO music director emeritus Jesús López-Cobos. She has made two recordings with López-Cobos and the London Philharmonic.
   The concert, to be led by CSO associate conductor John Morris Russell, is at 7:30 p.m. Also on the program, dubbed "Grand Voyage" for its international flavor, are Wagner's Overture to "The Flying Dutchman," the finale from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade," Dvorak's Slavonic Dance No. 1 and Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio Italien."
   The bit about "old acquaintances" fits Chee-Yun, too. Named adjunct professor of violin at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in November, she immediately found herself among friends.
   "Piotr Milewski (professor of violin at CCM) used to be my scale teacher at the Aspen Music Festival. I know Dr. Yim (Won-Bin Yim, also a CCM violin professor) from my pre-college days, and I've known Kurt Sassmannshaus (Starling Professor and chair of the CCM string department) since my first summer at Aspen in 1983.
   "I feel like part of a family."
   It was family husband Eugene Kim, a fellow in pediatric surgery at Cincinnati Children's Hospital that prompted her move to Cincinnati.
   "When I was here to play the Mendelssohn Concerto (in February 2002, with López-Cobos), it was the same week my husband was interviewing at Children's Hospital. He was flying out as I was flying in. I remember being on the phone with him and he said, 'Could you take a look at the town from the perspective of would I like living here?' He was so impressed with the program."
   The couple has been living in Hyde Park since June.
   Kim, who grew up in Tyler, Texas, came to Children's Hospital from Columbia Presbyterian in New York City. They have been married for six years. Leading busy lives has been advantageous for both of them, she said.
   "At first a lot of people were like, 'You two have such demanding careers. How is it going to work?' I think it worked out because of that. If I was staying home most of the time waiting for him I would probably certainly have gone crazy, and I think he would have been the same way. But because he was so busy and because I've been busy, it worked out."
   A native of Seoul, Korea, Chee-Yun came to the U.S. at 13 to study with Dorothy DeLay at New York's Juilliard School. DeLay, teacher of a whole generation of top violinists, also taught at CCM until her death in 2002. It is her position that Chee-Yun, violinist Cho-Liang Lin (distinguished guest artist at CCM) and Sassmannshaus have been tapped to fill. All were DeLay students. "Nobody is going to be able to replace her," said Chee-Yun. "She was one of a kind,"
   Now 32, Chee-Yun has performed all over the U.S. and in Europe and Asia, where she received Korea's "Nan Pa" award, its highest musical honor. Winner of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, she has toured nationally with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony and performed at the White House for President Clinton. She returned from Madrid last week, where she performed the Violin Concerto No. 2 by Krzysztov Penderecki, a work she has also recorded.
   She has four "really diligent, wonderful students" at CCM, she said. She teaches them on a weekly basis, schedule permitting. "I haven't been home since the second week of November, but I'll be making up those lessons now. I feel like I'm learning, as well."
   Next season includes a recital tour with pianist Barry Douglas and chamber music with pianist/CCM eminent scholar James Tocco and other CCM faculty artists.
   She and Kim love Cincinnati. The Christmas season has intensified that, she said.
   "When I came home (from Spain) he was talking about how it's so different here than it was at Columbia Hospital. He said people here take Christmas very seriously. There was a 6-year-old boy who had surgery and was crying 'Oh, I'm not going to be home for Christmas and Santa is not going to be able to give me my gifts.' Then Christmas Day he saw the boy and he had all the toys at the foot of his bed. Eugene went to him and said, 'I see Santa remembered you were at the hospital.' The boy was so happy."
   The CSO's New Year's Eve concert is 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Music Hall. Tickets are $13.75-$56.75 at (513) 381-3300, the CSO sales office in Memorial Hall, online at www.cincinnatisymphony.org or at the Music Hall box office the evening of the concert
(first published in The Cincinnati Post Dec. 30, 2003)