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Bekkers Piano Guitar Duo discography on CDBABY, also available on itunes Call for Scores of Multi-hand Piano Duets Project, 2011 House Concerts for Art Music, 2010 (14-page PDF) Maui Tips for Newcomers by a Newcomer, a new blog |
Born in Brunei of Chinese parents, Anne Ku grew up on Okinawa, Japan where she learned English from age 7 and the piano from age 8. After graduating valedictorian from Kubasaki High School, she won a full scholarship to Duke University where she double majored in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. She actively participated in chamber music performance while studying the piano under Randall Love. During her junior year abroad at McGill University in Montreal, she became interested in operations research. Three days in London, that following summer, during her backpacking trip to Europe and prior to her six week summer programme at New College Oxford, lured her to change her postgraduate plans from staying in the USA to pursuing an MSc. in Operational Research at the London School of Economics. Her first job in management consulting sent her to Singapore where she learned scuba diving, windsurfing and waterskiing. Consulting in the financial sector led her to work for a Swiss bank in treasury planning. Together with a short banking assignment in Jakarta, her involvement in improving treasury operations changed her focus to dealing room technology and project management. Missing classical music and theatre outings, Anne returned to London to explore new career directions, which included applying to business schools, running a software company, and taking classes in entrepreneurial management. She thought she could kill two birds with one stone by doing a PhD at London Business School and taking on short term contracts on the side. Her research into flexibility and uncertainty in a deregulated electricity regime took her into the energy industry, with a 14 month stint in Houston. Highlights of the single life in the bustling energy capital included driving a red convertible, living in a bright loft apartment with access to two swimming pools, flying to Mexico and elsewhere for long weekends and conferences, and meeting other yuppies whose worlds were their oysters. Before returning to London, Anne travelled to Colombia and Peru which whetted her appetite for world travel two years later: 3 months around the world on business and for pleasure....Fast forward then years later, she was interviewed by the weekly newspaper of the largest university in the Netherlands for her second chamber opera Culture Shock! which premiered in Utrecht on 2 June 2008. From Utrecht Conservatory, she obtained her Bachelor of Music with Honors in Composition and a teaching diploma in piano, her thesis on sightreading. Since then she has focussed on chamber music performance with guitar, French horn, and cello and active as producer of Monument House Concert Series and traveling the world with her piano guitar duo and sharing her adventures through her blogs. |
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