About Me

How I Got Started

When I was 5 years old, my mom asked me if I wanted to play the violin. I agreed without really listening, since I was busy playing with my Barbie dolls and bopping to tunes on my Fisher-Price turntable.

But turns out, I was what people like to call a “natural”. Playing came easily to me and I advanced through the Suzuki books with alarming ease. Quiet and painfully shy, I learned that playing the violin and doing it well made me special and different. It made people take notice of me and like me.

It was with this information that at age 9, I told my mother that I wanted to be a professional violinist. Half a year later, we moved from Seattle to the raucous bustle of Manhattan.

My violin teacher said that I needed to go home from school everyday before recess, so I would have time to practice. So every afternoon, while my schoolmates ran screaming with delight onto the school playground, I trudged home to an empty apartment, my violin waiting in my bedroom.

Being a “Child Prodigy”

Three short years later, I was standing in front of the Baltimore Symphony, puffy in pink chiffon and playing a Paganini Concerto. I was christened a “child prodigy” and I traveled the world, playing my face off. Eventually, I ended up at the Juilliard School, where I went through the Pre-College Program and got two degrees. I also cut my teeth early as a teacher, as an assistant to Dorothy DeLay before I had graduated from her class.

The thing is though, everything in life is a trade off.

The path of a child prodigy is one of an accelerated entry into adulthood, without the luxuries of time and experimentation. So, even though I gained a career and travel and entry into a rarified world of music making that few have had access to, I also shed early all the trappings of girlhood; hobbies and interests, friends and curiosities, goofing off and going to prom.

Which left me wondering, two decades later…

“Is It Recess Yet?”

Would things have been different had I been allowed to take recess; to eat lunch with my friends; to take time off and travel the world; to live in the college dorms; to experiment with hobbies that interested me but I was never able to pursue?

So now, here I am, intent on exploring the things that interest me for no other reason that that I think they’re fun or cool or pleasurable. Not because I’m good at them or because people like me better because I can do them.

It’s a weird feeling to do things just because I feel like doing them.

A few years ago, I discovered that I like to write. and even though it seemed impossible at the time, I got my MFA in creative writing, and even won a couple of writing prizes along the way, while maintaining a full-time university faculty position and founding an award-winning quartet that played in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to federal prisons. After finishing my MFA, I won a Fulbright grant, to work on a project combining my two main interests – music and writing – in Seoul, Korea.

Though this adventure of blending two creative practices hasn’t been easy, I’m learning a lot about myself and how to be creatively courageous, even when I’m unsure about the outcome. My hope is that this blog will serve as a window into my experiments and perhaps move you to seek out your own forays into creativity that could help enhance and inspire your work.

Praised by critics for her “astounding virtuosic gifts” (Boston Herald), “achingly pure sound” (The Toronto Star), and “impressive technical and interpretive control” (The New York Times), Tricia Park enjoys a diverse and eclectic career as a violinist, educator, writer, curator, and podcaster.

She is the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, a Fulbright grant, and was selected as one of “Korea’s World Leaders of Tomorrow” by the Korean Daily Central newspaper. Since appearing in her first orchestral engagement at age 13 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, she has performed with the English Chamber Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra of South Africa; the Montreal, Dallas, Cincinnati, Seattle, Honolulu, Nevada, and Lincoln Symphonies; and the Calgary, Buffalo, and Westchester and Naples Philharmonics. Tricia has given recitals throughout the United States and abroad, including a highly acclaimed performance at the Ravinia Rising Stars series. She also performs as half of the violin-fiddle duo, Tricia & Taylor, with fiddler-violinist, Taylor Morris.

Tricia is the founder of the Solera Quartet, the winner of the Pro Musicis International Award and the first American chamber ensemble chosen for this distinction. Acclaimed as “top-notch, intense, stylish, and with an abundance of flare and talent,” the Solera Quartet performed their debut recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall to celebrate their addition to Pro Musicis’ roster. The Soleras’ debut album, Every Moment Present, features music by Janacek, Mendelssohn, and Caroline Shaw and was hailed by The New York Times as “intoxicating….The quartet’s playing on the recording is sensitive and finely articulated throughout and the sound bright and vivid.”

Other career highlights include Tricia’s recital debut at the Kennedy Center, appearances at the Lincoln Center Festival in Bright Sheng’s The Silver River, her Korean debut performance with the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) Orchestra and collaborations with composer Tan Dun. As First Violinist of the Maia Quartet from 2005-2011, she performed at Lincoln Center and the 92nd Street Y in New York and Beijing’s Forbidden City Hall and was on faculty at the University of Iowa.

Passionate about arts education and community development, Tricia is the co-founder and artistic director of MusicIC, a chamber music festival that explores the connections between music and literature. Tricia received an MFA from the Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was a recipient of the New Artist Society Scholarship and was awarded a Writing Fellow Prize. Her writing has been published in Cleaver, Alyss, and F News Magazines and she has been a finalist for contests in C&R Press and The Rumpus. She has taught writing for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa and she is also the co-lead of the Chicago chapter of Women Who Submit, an organization that seeks to empower women and non-binary writers.

Tricia received her Bachelor and Master of Music from the Juilliard School where she was a recipient of the Starling-DeLay Teaching Fellowship. She’s been on faculty at such institutions as the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa and has performed with Pinchas Zukerman, Cho-Liang Lin, Michael Tree, Gary Hoffman, Paul Neubauer, Robert McDonald, and members of the American, Guarneri, Juilliard, Orion String Quartets and Eighth Blackbird. Former teachers include Dorothy DeLay, Felix Galimir, Cho-Liang Lin, Donald Weilerstein, Hyo Kang, and Piotr Milewski.

Currently, Tricia teaches creative writing for Cleaver Magazine where she is also a Creative Non Fiction editor. Tricia also maintains a private studio of violin/viola students and writing clients, and hosts the podcast, “Is it Recess Yet? Confessions of a Former Child Prodigy.”