17 year old percussionist Eric Goldberg is a member of the CSO Institute’s Percussion Scholarship Group.
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Eric Goldberg, 17, is a senior at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in Chicago, IL. He has studied percussion with Doug Waddell (Lyric Opera of Chicago) and Patsy Dash (Chicago Symphony Orchestra) for the past nine years as a member of the Percussion Scholarship Group (PSG), a program of the CSO’s Institute for Learning, Access and Training.
Since his joining the group, Eric has received many honors and a wide range of performance experience. In 2009, as a member of the PSG, he was featured on the NPR radio show From the Top at a taping in Dallas, TX. He was also featured on the show in 2012 at a taping in Kalamazoo, MI as a member of a duo with fellow PSG member Shuya Gong, and will appear on the show again as a soloist on March 8 in New Albany, OH. He has been a featured soloist with the CSO as a winner of the Fidelity Young Artists Competition in 2011 and 2012, working under conductors Mei-Ann Chen and Edwin Outwater. He was also featured with the Chicago Sinfonietta on their opening night concerts this season by the invitation of their new music director Mei-Ann Chen.
In 2012, Eric performed as a member of the All-State Honors Orchestra at the Illinois Music Education Conference, where he was named principal percussionist, and received the same position in the All-State Honors Band at the 2013 Conference. He was named an Emerson Scholar at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, where he studied this past summer. As a member of the PSG, Eric was featured with the CSO this season on their performances of Welcome, Yule!, their annual Christmas concert, and worked under the direction of Chicago Symphony Chorus director Duain Wolfe. He was a member of the 2013 Chicago Youth in Music Festival Orchestra, where he worked with conductors Cliff Colnot, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and Carlos Prieto. Recently, he has been named a 2013 YoungArts Merit Award Winner, a Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist, and has been admitted to the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, which he will tour with this summer.
Eric plans to study music in college and pursue a career as a professional musician. Apart from playing music, Eric has great passions for photography and theater. He has acted in many theatrical productions and has also helped compose music for several plays at his school.