Young music student to play with Indy orchestra

A high-school student working with a professor in IU’s On-campus Precollege Enrollment-Nondegree Program will get a chance to play piano with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in late July, according to an IU news release.\nJingxuan Zhang, 15, won the orchestra’s Young Musicians Contest and the Michael Ben and Illene Komisarow Maurer Award with $1,000, according to the news release. On July 18 and 19, he will play the piece he won the competition with – the first movement of Schumann’s Concerto in A Minor.\nZhang, originally from China, started taking piano lessons when he was 5 years old. His family moved to the United States in 2001, and in 2002 they moved to Carmel, Ind., according to the news release. Zhang now studies with music professor Arnaldo Cohen, and has won awards in the Young Artist Division of the World Piano Competition put on by the American Music Scholarship Association, according to the news release. Cohen said being able to play with the symphony was a culmination of his student’s talents.\n“This is the result of Jingxuan’s hard work,” he said in the news release. “He is a delightful young man, smart and with a wonderful sense of humor. At 15, he already has an outstanding musical maturity which predicts a very bright future ahead of him.”