| By Michael Taylor
Question: “What does the daughter of a piano teacher, a voice instructor and younger sister to a flutist become when she grows up?”
Answer: “A violinist for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.” Or at least that was the case for newcomer Eun Park.
It’s roughly 1:30 pm and the musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra have finished their morning rehearsal. I’ve asked Eun Park if she would agree to meet so that we could highlight her arrival in Detroit in a musician profile. As she has graciously accepted, she arrives promptly in the musician’s lounge for our interview.
We sit and it becomes immediately apparent that she is an astute individual and takes pride in being prepared, but she also carries a “light-spirited” personality that welcomes the engagement of conversation. I assure her my interrogation will only keep her for a few moments, she laughs and our time morphs from a question-answer session to a pleasant chat about her life’s journey.
Eun Park begins her tenure this season with the DSO after playing with the Ft. Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas for three-and-half years. Born in South Korea to a family of musicians, she lived in a home continuously filled with music and began playing piano at the age of 6. When she was 9, Park was introduced to violin by her uncle who was an instructor at the Sunhwa Art School in South Korea.
“I really didn’t have a desire to play piano or music of any kind, and I only started playing violin because my uncle played.” she notes. This would all change while preparing for her 6th grade audition into the prestigious Sunhwa Art School. “I fell in love with the sound of the violin and couldn’t put it down,” recalls Park. While studying she became even more intrigued by the nature of the instrument through many new compositions she heard. Upon entrance into the esteemed school she dedicated herself to the violin, excelling through her school’s curriculum and receiving accolades from her instructors and peers. Over the next several years she would go on to play in music festivals all over the world, including Germany, Japan, England and Amsterdam, while setting her sights on a higher goal of joining a major symphony orchestra.
That ambition would relocate Park to the United States, and in 1996 she was accepted into the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., where she studied and received her bachelor’s degree in 2000. She earned her master’s degree two years later from Rice University in Houston, and landed a position with the Ft. Worth Symphony Orchestra.
From her first classical experience as a toddler listening to her older sister, a flutist, Park’s journey came full circle when she joined the DSO. “Coming to the DSO was a fulfillment of a lifelong goal to play with a major symphony. I’ve worked hard so that I could reach this point.”
When asked about her favorites in classical music she listed, “Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, Neeme Järvi, and Tchaikovsky concerto” as her favorite composers, conductor and musical composition.
“So have you adjusted to the weather here?” I ask bringing to close my list of questions, “It was snowing when I flew in for the audition,” she responds, “and I thought driving in it would be tricky but it wasn’t too bad.” The same proves true of her quick acclimation to life at Orchestra Hall when asked about new challenges she may have faced after coming to the U.S.
When not performing with the DSO, Park spends her time sharpening her craft at her residence in Troy. She is an avid swimmer, enjoys spending time with her chihuahua, listens to a variety of music ranging from anything from jazz, to pop and gospel, and travels to her home in South Korea twice a year.
Michael Taylor is a public relations intern at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
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