It’s not every day you get a pairing of current violin prodigy with a former guitar prodigy. But that’s what we have here, as Kevin Loh, a superb guitarist from Singapore, whom we featured back in February 2018 during our Sunday Prodigy series in a video from when he was just 10, teams up with fellow Singaporean violin sensation Chloe Chua, age 11, for sensitive rendering of Astor Piazzolla’s ‘Café 1930’ from his Histoire du Tango suite. Chua was the First Prize winner in the junior category of the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin Competition in Geneva, Switzerland. Loh, now 20, studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School in London for seven years (partially funded at the outset by none other than the Rolling Stones!), and has concertized and participated in guitar competitions all over the world in recent years. (I saw him play at the GFA in Denver in 2016; he was excellent!). Though he is currently serving his mandatory two-year national service in Singapore, he will no doubt be impressing audiences again in the not too distant future, so keep an eye (ear!) out for him!
In a Different Duos Sunday #8 a few weeks ago, we posted a different movement from Histoire Du Tango, ‘Nightclub 1960,’ played by Armenian musicians vilolinist Lilit Tonoyan (violin) and Lilit Mardiyan (guitar) —Blair Jackson
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