Piano music of Chris Acquafondata, performed by E-Na Song HD

Recorded at First Unitarian Church of Rochester October 20, 2017 1. Barbara Allen Fantasy (2017) 2. Nocturne 2 (2017) 3. American Rhapsody (2007) Christopher Acquafondata Chris was born Christopher Fondy in Boston, Massachusetts in 1964. His family moved to DeWitt, a suburb of Syracuse, New York in 1965. He has lived in the city of Syracuse since 1985. He attended Syracuse University, where he received a Bachelor of Science in biology in 1986. In 1972, when he was 8 years old, Chris’ parents took him to an all-Chopin concert by the legendary Polish pianist Artur Rubinstein. This concert was a life-changing experience for him. From that night on he wanted to be a composer. He began taking piano lessons shorty after that, and began his first attempts at composing. He has been composing ever since, but it is only since 2006, when he composed a four movement piano suite entitled “Sur Une Etoile” that he was satisfied with the results. It was then that he adopted his original family name Acquafondata, and he has composed under the name Christopher Michael Acquafondata ever since. In 2007 he composed “American Rhapsody” for his friends Kim Parr and Paul Bern on the occasion of their wedding. This was followed by a hiatus of nearly ten years. The muse returned in December 2016, when he began work on the “Barbara Allen Fantasy”, which is based upon the well-known Scottish ballad “Barbara Allen” and dedicated to Elizabeth “Libby” Auser, a dear friend who died tragically in 2001 at the age of 35. In September 2017 he composed another piano piece entitled "Nocturne 2". He is currently at work on a full-length piano sonata. Chris is almost entirely self-taught as a composer. His only formal musical training was 6 years of piano lessons and 2 semesters of basic music theory at Syracuse University. E-Na Song, from South Korea, earned a Bachelor’s degree in 2012, studying with Hyung-Bae Kim at Seoul National University. She held a scholarship there and graduated with honors. She earned her Master of Music degree in Piano Performance from the Eastman School of Music in 2014 and is currently finishing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance and Literature there where she studied with Professor Rebecca Penneys. She has worked as a teaching assistant of the studio of Rebecca Penneys. As a soloist, she has made her New York debut in Weill Hall, Carnegie Hall as a winner of American Protégé International Piano Competition in 2016. The same year she won second prize in the International Keyboard Odyssiad Competition in Colorado. She was selected to perform with "Mostly Philharmonic Orchestra” in South Korea in 2014 and she performed with "Torun Symphony Orchestra" in Poland in 2015. E-Na enjoys performing in smaller community setting as well as in large concert halls. In Rochester, NY, she performed on the Washington Square Series, the Eastman School of Music Piano Series at the Summit Community, and at the George Eastman House as a part of their