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Violist in CU program wins Grammy

Sunday’s Grammy Awards honored a local viola player when Richard Yongjae O’Neill and conductor David Alan Miller won for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. O’Neill is the newest member of the CU Boulder College of Music’s string faculty. 

O’Neill, who has been nominated for two previous Grammy Awards, won for his performance of Christopher Theofanidis’ Concerto for Viola and Chamber Orchestra.   

“This is a great day for the viola,” said O’Neill, who called the recognition the honor of a lifetime. 

“During this most challenging time for all musicians, my eternal thanks goes to my family, to the Takács Quartet and CU Boulder for keeping me alive,” O’Neill said in his virtual acceptance speech, during which he also thanked composer Christopher Theofanidis and producer Silas Brown. 

Now in its 46th season, CU Boulder’s Takács Quartet performs about 80 concerts worldwide each year and is renowned for the vitality and personality of its interpretations. The group won its own Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance in 2002.

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According to a 2017 profile story on CharacterMedia.Com, the Juilliard-trained O’Neill was born to a mentally disabled mother – a Korean War orphan whose malnourishment led to permanent brain damage. O’Neill was raised by Perry and Mildred O’Neill, a white couple in Sequim, Washington, who took in 36 foster children over their lives – including O’Neill’s mother. 

O’Neill, 43, is a popular figure in South Korea, where he leads a charitable multicultural youth orchestra called “Hello?! Orchestra,” which he formed to promote mixed-race tolerance, diversity and music education. He won a 2013 International Emmy Award for Arts programming for a four-part documentary about the group that was watched by more than 12 million people. 

“A lot of those kids come from abusive situations or single-parent homes in Korea. A lot of them are discriminated against in elementary school,” said O’Neill, who endured bullying in his own nearly all-white town growing up. 

Prior to joining CU earlier this year, O’Neill played viola for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City and performed as a soloist with some of the world’s top orchestras, including the London, Los Angeles and Seoul philharmonics.   

O’Neill is just the second person to win a Grammy Award for a viola performance in the history of the solo category. He calls the viola “a beautiful instrument of immense colors and emotional power that has been overlooked as a solo vehicle for many years. It’s a beautiful thing to be part of a young generation fighting to make the viola a prominent solo instrument.”

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