2017 Concerto Competition Winner!

Congratulations to Seohyun (Cece) Hong on winning the 2017 NYS Concerto Competition! CeCe will perform the Reinecke Flute Concerto, 1st mvt at the NYS Winter Concert on March 4th at Norwalk Concert Hall, which begins at 3pm.

Cece began playing flute at age seven, and is now a senior at Staples High School, learning privately with Ms. Adrianne Greenbaum. She has been a member of the Norwalk Youth Symphony for nine years and is currently the Principal Flute of the Principal Orchestra. She has been in the Principal Orchestra for four years.

In 2016, Cece was selected as a winner of the American Chamber Orchestra Concerto Competition, where she performed the Chaminade Concertino with the orchestra. In 2017, she won second place at the Musical Club of Hartford Competition. In 2016 and 2017, Cece participated in both the Western Regional Band and Orchestra, along with All State Band.

At NYS, Cece has performed at Tanglewood in 2014, toured Europe in 2016, and performed at Carnegie Hall in 2017. Along with orchestral playing, Cece has been a participant of Kyong-Hee Cho’s annual Playing by Heart benefit concert. For the past four years she has performed and raised a over $12,000 for Camp Rising Sun, Amazon Promise, and the Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services. She has also established the club, Concerts for a Cause, at Staples, and raised money to donate to victims of Hurricane Harvey this past fall. She has spent her summers at the Tanglewood flute program in 2015, and has also been to the Aria International Music Academy in 2016 and 2017, participating in master classes taught by Judith Mendenhall (Mannes), Bonnie

Boyd (Eastman), and John Thorne (Northwestern).

Cece is a four-year honors student with membership in the National Honors Society and the Rho Kappa Social Studies Honors Society. She has participated in the Staples Pit Orchestra for the Staples Players productions for the past four years. She also works as a food runner at Bartaco Westport, and is working towards becoming a state-certified EMT later this spring. Cece will continue to pursue music at Amherst College next year, where she will be on a Pre-Med track majoring in Chemistry or Neuroscience and a possible minor in ethics. She plans to keep music at the center of her life as she fulfills her dream of becoming a pediatrician or a psychiatrist.