Participant
Blaire Nayoun Kim
Violin
Accepted to the preliminary round of the 2026 Naumburg International Violin Competition.
Biography supplied for the 2026 competition.
Violinist Blaire Kim was born in South Korea and started playing violin at the age of 5. She made her Lincoln Center debut in 2023 by winning the Juilliard Dvorak Violin Concerto Competition, giving her the chance to perform at the Alice Tully Hall, with the Juilliard Orchestra and Maestro Ken-David Masur. She has also won top prize for the Irving Klein International Strings competition. Blaire has performed internationally on tour with orchestras such as An Die Musik Philharmonia and the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra in Korea and the Ukraine. She also was a featured performer in the Young Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition selection ceremony. A frequent prizewinner, she won a variety of national/ international competitions during her youth, including the grand prize from the Korean Newspaper Competition, and 1st prize from the 5th Hong Kong International Violin Competition. She was also featured on the program “Parents” on EBS as a young talent at the age of 10, and KBS 9PM News. Blaire has participated in summer festivals such as the Perlman Music Program (2021-2022 as Littles, 2025-2026 as Chamber Music Workshop), Forum Musikae International Summer Festival in Spain, where she was the youngest performer, the Academie international D'ete de Nice Festival in France, and the Crans Montana Summer Camp hosted by Shlomo Mintz. Blaire’s chamber music mentor includes renowned musicians such as Merry Peckham, Kim Kashikashian, Don Weilerstein, Areta Zhulla, and many more. Blaire studied with Sunny Lee and Jaesung Jeon while attending Yewon Arts Middle School before being accepted to Juilliard Pre-College, where she studied with Professor Li Lin since 2017. She is currently pursuing her first year Masters, studying at The Juilliard School with Maestro Itzhak Perlman, and Professor Catherine Cho, (2023-) with full scholarship.
Pianists
2026 International Violin Competition
Jun Cho
, piano
Pianist Jun Cho combines solo performance, chamber music, and teaching. He has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Benaroya Hall, and Seoul Arts Center, and his collaborators include Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Stefan Jackiw, Ray Chen, and Randall Goosby. His work also extends to tango through performances with the Pedro Giraudo Tango Quartet. In 2024, he participated in the world premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s Haemosu’s Celestial Chariot Ride with Sejong Soloists at Zankel Hall.
Cho is assistant professor of piano and coordinator of the keyboard area at Syracuse University. He also teaches at the Perlman Music Program and serves as Itzhak Perlman’s studio pianist at Juilliard. A founding member of New York in Chuncheon, he has helped develop a South Korean festival that connects New York musicians with local audiences and students through concerts, masterclasses, and mentorship.
He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Juilliard and a doctorate at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. His teachers include Julian Martin and Jon Kimura Parker.