Press Release
March 9, 2010
A Star Is Born
Orchestra Nova Announces Winner of The Next Star Talent Competition

After surviving two rounds, the three finalists of Orchestra Nova's The Next Star amateur talent competition performed with the orchestra in their third and last concert on Monday night in La Jolla . Internet voters and audience members at the three concerts were the judges – even the orchestra's musicians got to vote – in what transpired to be one of the closest races ever for a talent competition. The winner was Maria Lozano, a soprano and a graduate student at San Diego State University . Hei-ock Kim and Gorden Cheng, both pianists, were “neck and neck” with Maria to the very end. Audience members at all three concerts expressed their joy and enthusiasm for the performances through shouts of “bravo,” applause and standing ovations.

“They're all winners in my book,” said the orchestra's artistic director, “and we will support all three in their endeavors going forward.” He went on to say, “We were all overwhelmed by the talent of these competitors. The one thing that has really struck me is the absolute delight with which they cherished this opportunity. No professional soloist that I've ever worked with has been more appreciated by an orchestra. Experiences like this truly rekindle the “magic of making music.”

There was no age limit for this competition but it was limited to amateurs living in San Diego County . It's the first known classical music talent competition where audience and Internet voters were the judges. The winner will perform with the orchestra in the future.

Maria, born and raised in Ensenada, Baja California, with four older brothers and a younger sister, learned to love music from her opera-loving father who listened to opera on KPBS on his only day off from work and studying. After secondary school, she moved to Mexico City and joined the Mexican Navy where she sang with the Navy chorus. She subsequently studied computer engineering at Baja California University before switching to music, the great love of her life. She spent a grueling year taking a nine-hour round-trip bus trip every day to study voice with Mary MacKenzie at San Diego State University and earned her B.A. degree. She is now living in San Diego as a graduate student at SDSU.

Gorden Cheng came to the U.S. from China with his family when he was five years old so his father could pursue a PhD. In mechanical engineering. He began piano lessons at the age of eight, not because he wanted to but because it was an Asian tradition that children must play a musical instrument. As a teenager, he stopped playing the piano until one day, feeling a little “down,” he went to the piano and began playing again. “I felt pure joy and I knew then that I couldn't live my life without music,” he says. With a computer engineering degree from the University of Texas-Dallas , he moved to San Diego where he currently works as a systems engineer at Sony.

Hei-ock Kim, born and raised in New Jersey , began playing the piano when she was three years old and entered the Juilliard pre-college program at the age of nine. Her mother was determined that her “trio of girls” would attend Princeton and they didn't disappoint, all graduating from Princeton , Hei-ock with a B.A. degree in Philosophy. Her love of music drew her back to Juilliard where she earned an M.A. degree and later a D.M.A. at Catholic University of America. She moved to San Diego because of her love for nature and an interest in environmental causes. She currently works as a research assistant at Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

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