DITTO Festival announced it’s grand beginning with by shouting ‘Korea, falls into Classical Music!’. The scene of the festival was passionate and in the center of it was Ensemble DITTO.
Ensemble DITTO, a project chamber ensemble started by violist Richard Yongjae O‘Neill, began with hopes of more actively inviting a wider and more diverse audience into classical music. Through their first concert in 2007, DITTO attracted attention from both critics and audience members, charming everyone with not only their performance but also with their good looks and great on-stage manners. In 2008 along with violist Richard Yongjae O'Neill, pianist Dong-Hyek Lim, violinists Stefan Jackiw and Johnny Lee, cellist Patrick Jee and bassist DaXun Zhang gathered to play 'Trout’. At their third season with violist Richard as music director, along with returning members Stefan Jackiw, Johnny Lee, and Patrick Jee were pianist Ji-Yong and cellist Michael Nicolas.
Pianist Ji-Yong at the age of ten became the youngest pianist ever to win the New York Philharmonic Young Artists Competition and has made a highly acclaimed debut with the New York Philharmonic. At the time he signed with one of the world’s top classical music management company IMG Artists as their youngest pianist in history. Cellist Michael Nicolas, the associate principal cello of Montreal Symphony, first visited Korea and with the request of audience members that attended his small recital with a pianist, joined DITTO in 2009.
This coming June will be DITTO’s fourth season and the returning members include Richard Yongjae O’Neill, Stefan Jackiw, Michael Nicolas and Ji-Yong. Japanese violinist Shunske Sato will be joining for the tour in Korea.
The theme for this season is ‘bohemian’, a term that most likely well reflects the daily lives of the members that are always traveling to different cities for concerts all year around. Along the ‘bohemian’ works DITTO will be performing this season is Dvorak Piano Quintet. Prior to the festival in June, DITTO will be continue to make new and different attempts to keep in contact with the audience.
Ever since their beginning, DITTO has received great attention not only for their wonderful performances but also for their differentiated marketing tactics and innovative attempts that no other classical musicians have made before.
In 2008, as one of the encores DITTO played a OST from the famous Korean drama ‘White Tower’ and also gathered in the Hong-dae area, a well known young and urban area in Seoul, to perform with the catch phrase ‘Welcome to Classic’. For the third season in 2009, DITTO gathered in Seoul to make a music video, which gained great attention once revealed to the public. Aside from the recital, DITTO also presented a special family concert with repertoire such as Saint-Saens Carnival of Animals along with special video images made just for this concert. Through efforts of bringing together diverse repertoire for a diverse audience, DITTO has succeeded at bringing people in their teens and twenties to the concert halls for chamber music. DITTO will go broad to Japan for two concerts in Tokyo International Forum and Osaka Symphony Hall which is an unprecedented case for a Korean classical music ensemble. This event suggests the potential of Korean cultural contents from the classical music scene succeeding not only in Japan but also worldwide. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.