Neighborhood Church presents its Annual Organ Concert featuring Guest Artist, Weicheng Zhao on Sunday, January 26 at 4:00 pm in the Sanctuary.
Neighborhood Church's marvelous33-rank pipe organ will come alive with a program of Pacific Rim fusion on Sunday, January 26 at 4 p.m. Prize-winning organist Weicheng Zhao will perform a program of works by J. S. Bach, Maurice Duruflé, and Marcel Dupré, as well as his own transcriptions of music by Chinese composers Yuankai Bao, and Gang Chen and Zhanhao He. Mr. Zhao will perform Chen and He’s “The Butterfly Lovers” with his wife, violinist Fang Gao. “The Butterfly Lovers,” regarded as the Chinese equivalent of Romeo and Juliet, has been a familiar love story in China for more than 1000 years.
A native of Tianjin, China, Weicheng Zhao is currently a student of Cherry Rhodes at the USC Thornton School of Music. He began his musical training in Tianjin at the age of five, studying the Electone organ, composition, and eventually the pipe organ. In 2007, he was the winner of the Yamaha National Electronic Organ Competition held in Shanghai. In 2012 he won first prize at the International Organ Competition in Miami, Florida. This past November Mr. Zhao was Audience and second prize winner at the Clarence Mader National Organ Competition in Claremont, CA.