Two Queenstown entrepreneurs and musical maestros are hosting a dinner concert on Friday featuring two very talented classical musicians.
Local Polish-raised pianist and piano teacher Kinga Krupa and award-winning young Kiwi violinist Rose Light are performing at The Carlin Hotel’s Oro Restaurant.
The MC is mega-jeweller Sir Michael Hill, who also sponsors the biennial Michael Hill International Violin Competition which resumes in Queenstown and Auckland this June following Covid interruptions.
Fifty percent of the four-course dinner show’s ticket price will go towards the event’s youth programmes – Light, who plays a violin Hill’s lent her, will also be one of six violin fellows featured in the comp.
Hotel/restaurant owner Kevin Carlin, who regularly plays the piano for Oro guests, is also a sponsor of the violin comp and accommodating the judges – award-winning violinists themselves – while they’re in Queenstown.
Performing for dinner: Virtuoso Kinga Krupa
Carlin says he and Hill – having both first come to Queenstown in the ’90s – have developed a close bond due to the latter’s violin competition.
Hill, he says, is “an amazing, creative, generous man”.
“He’s also a great artist – he often texts me little sketches.
“One day he sent me one of a rocket ship taking off, with a bunch of people watching, and I said, ‘what’s the meaning of this?’.
“He says, ‘well, I’m coming over to see you’.”
Musical dinner show, The Carlin Hotel’s Oro Restaurant, April 21, 8pm. Tickets $200 via ORORestaurant.co.nz, music students free via [email protected]
