May 14, 2009 2:03 pm US/Eastern
Orchestra with Viola Soloist "C.J." Chang
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
A passionate Phillies fan is taking center stage at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts tonight through Saturday as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
As unlikely as it sounds, this artist's love of the Phillies and his music began in South Korea.
CBS 3's Pat Ciarrocchi tells us she found a charming, humble and gifted violist in Choong-Jin Chang. He's known as "C.J."
C.J. Chang is the orchestra's principal viola. For the first time this weekend, he'll be the featured soloist in the subscription series – where the audiences are fans with a very cultured ear.
The viola is C.J.'s instrument for telling you how he feels.
"There is music for every emotion, " Chang says. " Happiness, sorrow, anger, excitement and sometimes humor. I get more nervous talking to people than playing."
C.J. rehearsed his solo – a Bartok viola concerto – with the orchestra one afternoon this week at Verizon Hall.
"Every turn of the phrase every change of color. They're right there with you and it really inspires you to play the best you can," says Chang.
C.J. Chang was a violin prodigy in his native South Korea.
A music teacher from Julliard in New York City offered to sponsor him to study in the United States. He was just 12. Before the first year was over, his family joined him, but decided to settle in Cherry Hill where life would be less expensive and more expansive.
As a teenager, C.J. didn't stray far from his love of chamber music, though he did say he had to "get to know himself." He learned – beyond a doubt – that music was in his soul. He studied at Temple University, then the acclaimed Curtis Institute of Music where one day, he ear for the violin gave way to the darker, deeper sound of the viola.
"Three four hours just went by like three or four minutes. That's when I knew I should consider this instrument."
The viola is an instrument played in the same position as violin, under the chin, but it's bigger with one more string lower in tone and one less stringer higher in sound.
As if by divine design, C.J. first connection to Philadelphia came in 1980 in South Korea. The family's new color television set could only get World Series Baseball. That's the year the Phillies won the championship.
"The 1980 world series was going on the year the Phillies won... so I became such a Phillies fan in Korea."
Now, C.J. and his family are fans of every Philadelphia sports team.
And that's not the only connection. The same year that the Phillies won the 1980 title, the violin virtuoso was taken to a concert to hear Eugene Ormandy and the world renowned Philadelphia Orchestra.
"It blew me away," says Chang.
For the longest time, C.J. says, he just wanted to be a good musician. Little could he have imagined that his first job, after completing a diploma program in the viola at Curtis, would be playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra – the same orchestra that "blew him away" at 12.
RELATED LINK:
www.philorch.org
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