Music at the Movies!
Join us in the Student Union Ballroom Lobby for a free lunch time concert featuring violinist Alex Malaimare and pianist Chung-Ha Kim in a short program of movie music. Stop in for a bit or stay for the whole concert. You are welcome to bring your lunch. Join us!
*This concert is part of the Partnership in Education and Civic Engagement with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra. Alex Malaimare is a violinist with the ISO.
Performer Biographies
Alex Malaimare
Ion-Alexandru Malaimare, a native of Romania, has performed in recitals and concerts in Europe and the United States. An integral part of his career development as a musician was winning the scholarship offered by the SoNoRo Chamber Music Workshops. He has participated in the master classes of renowned artists such as Rachel Barton Pine, Almita Vamos, Rony Rogoff, and Helmut Nicolai.
Ion-Alexandru has participated in numerous competitions and was the 1st Prize winner at the Young Artist Competition of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) and the University of Illinois Concerto Competition. With his quartet, he won awards at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition and the New York Artists International Competition, which included an invitation to perform a recital at Carnegie Hall. He has served as Associate Concertmaster of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, Principal Second Violin of the Heartland Symphony Orchestra and Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, member of the residence quartet at the University of Evansville, and Adjunct Instructor of Violin at the University of Illinois Springfield.
Among other activities, Ion-Alexandru searches to expand his repertoire to include fiddle music of Romania and works from movie soundtracks. He is featured as a member of the music department for the Live Cinema Workshop “Distant Vision” of Francis Ford Coppola, broadcast on July 22, 2016. He is interested in expanding his audience beyond the traditional concert hall. In this regard, he started a TikTok channel (@1violin1bow) and, together with violist YooBin Lee, he started a YouTube Channel (The Eight Strings), featuring music videos for viola and violin. More recently, he participated in an online lecture-recital for the prestigious music festival (Young Artists Festival Bayreuth) in Bayreuth, Germany. He is featured on the faculty roster at Millikin University. Ion-Alexandru plays on an Ultralight violin made by Canadian-American luthier Joseph Curtin.
Chung-Ha Kim
Chung-Ha Kim, an official Steinway Artist since 2014, performs as a solo and a collaborative pianist with recent recitals at the Robert-Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf, Blackburn College (IL), University of Louisiana (Lafayette), Steinway Piano Gallery (Springfield, IL), University of Chicago, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Harper College (Palatine, IL), Western Illinois University (Macomb, IL) and Radford University (PA). Chung-Ha Kim has released three CDs: Maurice Ravel: Miroirs, A Palace of Strangers Is No City and Camille Saint-Säens: Carnival of Animals, available on iTunes and Amazon.
Chung-Ha Kim began her piano studies in Germany with Prof. Barbara Szczepanska at the Westfälische Schule für Musik in Münster and in the pre-college division of the Robert-Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf. After completing the Abitur at the Kardinal-von-Galen Gymnasium in Münster-Hiltrup, Chung-Ha Kim moved to the United States and completed a Bachelor of Music at the Manhattan School of Music, a Master of Music and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance at the University of Cincinnati where she studied with Dr. William Black and Frank Weinstock.
Dr. Kim has been a member of Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) and National Federation of Music Clubs for many years. She served as 1st Vice President of the Illinois State Music Teachers Association from 2008-2011 and was named President of the Decatur Area Music Teachers Association (DAMTA) in 2009. Her students, from pre-college to graduate school, have won numerous competitions, scholarships and awards. Dr. Kim teaches applied piano, class piano, preparatory piano, and piano pedagogy at Millikin University. She currently resides in Decatur, Illinois with her husband and son.
