2016 Competition
Winners
- 1st prize
Julian Schwarz (U.S.) & Marika Bournaki (Canada) - Cello/Piano
- 2nd prize and special prize for the best performance of Some Assembly Required
Coleman Itzkoff (U.S.) & Alin Melik-Adamyan (Armenia) - Cello/Piano
- 3rd prize
Hiroka Matsumoto (Japan) & Gaku Sugibayashi (Japan) - Violin/Piano
Finalists
Finalists are listed in no particular order:
- Inez Popko (Poland) & Nadejda Tzanova (Bulgaria)
- Flute/Piano
- Emmanuel Vukovich (Canada) & Ji Yung Lee (South Korea)
- Violin/Piano
- Julian Schwarz (U.S.) & Marika Bournaki (Canada)
- Cello/Piano
- Brendan Shea (U.S.) & Yerin Kim (South Korea)
- Violin/Piano
- Dominik Manz (Germany) & Goun Kim (South Korea)
- Cello/Piano
- Hiroka Matsumoto (Japan) & Gaku Sugibayashi (Japan)
- Violin/Piano
- Tomoki Park (South Korea) & Yezu Woo (South Korea)
- Violin/Piano
- Coleman Itzkoff (U.S.) & Alin Melik-Adamyan (Armenia)
- Cello/Piano
- Maximilian Strutynski (Germany) & Tobias Jackl (Germany)
- Clarinet/Piano
Special prize for the best performance of Some Assembly Required goes to:
- Coleman Itzkoff (U.S.) & Alin Melik-Adamyan (Armenia)
- Cello/Piano
Semi-Finalists
- William Shaub (U.S.) & Robin Giesbrecht (Bulgaria/Germany)
- Violin/Piano
- Cristian Battaglioli (Italy) & Marco Rinaudo (Italy)
- Saxophone/Piano
- Christopher Tun Andersen (Norway) & Zhen Chen (China)
- Violin/Piano
- Ismar Gomes (U.S.) & Wan-Chi Su (Taiwan)
- Cello/Piano
- Miles Jaques (U.S.) & John Wilson (U.S.)
- Clarinet/Piano
- Antonio Hallongren (Sweden) & Ava Nazar (Iran)
- Cello/Piano
- Inez Popko (Poland) & Nadejda Tzanova (Bulgaria)
- Flute/Piano
- Emmanuel Vukovich (Canada) & Ji Yung Lee (South Korea)
- Violin/Piano
- Julian Schwarz (U.S.) & Marika Bournaki (Canada)
- Cello/Piano
- Brendan Shea (U.S.) & Yerin Kim (South Korea)
- Violin/Piano
- ToniMarie Marchioni (U.S.) & Jacob Coleman (U.S.)
- Oboe/Piano
- Dominik Manz (Germany) & Goun Kim (South Korea)
- Cello/Piano
- Hiroka Matsumoto (Japan) & Gaku Sugibayashi (Japan)
- Violin/Piano
- Michael Brook (U.S.) & Joseph Piontek (U.S.)
- Viola/Piano
- Michiko Theurer (U.S.) & Rose Lachman (U.S.)
- Violin/Piano
- Eric Anderson (U.S.) & Yevgeny Yontov (Israel)
- Clarinet/Piano
- Hyun Jung Kim (South Korea) & Claire-Chung Lim (South Korea)
- Violin/Piano
- Carina Canonico (Canada) & Daniel Anastasio (U.S.)
- Clarinet/Piano
- Meredith Kufchak (U.S.) & Xin Zhao (China)
- Viola/Piano
- Tomoki Park (South Korea) & Yezu Woo (South Korea)
- Violin/Piano
- Coleman Itzkoff (U.S.) & Alin Melik-Adamyan (Armenia)
- Cello/Piano
- Eun Ji Oh (South Korea) & Min Young Kang (South Korea)
- Flute/Piano
- Maximilian Strutynski (Germany) & Tobias Jackl (Germany)
- Clarinet/Piano
- Christopher Luther (U.S.) & Yuying Su (Taiwan)
- Viola/Piano
2016 Judges
Martin Beaver
Jury Chairman
Photo: Marco Borggreve
Canadian violinist Martin Beaver was First Violin of the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet from June 2002 until its final concert in July 2013. As such, he appeared to critical and public acclaim on the major stages of the world including New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Berliner Philharmonie, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall and the Sydney Opera House. As a member of the Tokyo String Quartet, Mr. Beaver was privileged to perform on the 1727 Stradivarius violin from the “Paganini Quartet” set of instruments, on generous loan to the quartet from the Nippon Music Foundation. Recordings of the Tokyo String Quartet during his tenure notably include the complete Beethoven quartets on the Harmonia Mundi label.
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Elisabeth Pridonoff
Elisabeth Pridonoff has appeared with orchestras and on recital series throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Asia and has performed and taught at music festivals throughout the world including the Amalfi, Prague, Barcelona, Belgium, Chautauqua, and InterHarmony. She is an Emerita Professor of Piano at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music, and during the summers is on the faculty of the Brevard Festival. Previously she was co-artistic director of the CCM Prague International Piano Institute with her husband Eugene Pridonoff. A graduate of the Juilliard School, she holds masters degrees in both piano and voice having studied piano with Sasha Gorodnitsky and Adele Marcus, and voice with Hans Heinz and Anna Kaskas.
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Richie Hawley
Richie Hawley is a versatile and critically acclaimed artist who ranks among the most distinguished clarinetists of his generation. Mr. Hawley was appointed Principal Clarinet of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 1994 at the age of 23, only two years after graduating from the Curtis Institute of Music. He has since enjoyed a rewarding and multifaceted career as an orchestral clarinetist, recitalist, chamber musician, teacher and clinician. From 1994-2011, as the Principal Clarinet of the CSO, he impressed audiences around the world with a wide-ranging talent that blended virtuosity and the velvety, sonorous tone that has become his trademark. The Cincinnati Enquirer has praised him for the “seamless flowing tone so many clarinetists long for and few can achieve.” Many of the 60+ recordings by the CSO and Cincinnati Pops during his tenure have featured major solos of the clarinet repertoire. American Record Guide hailed Hawley’s “gorgeous” clarinet solo in the CSO’s Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 as “the crowning achievement” of the recording by Maestro Jesus Lopez-Cobos.
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2016 Composer in Residence
Arthur Gottschalk
A man whose music has been described as “rapturous, argumentative, and prickly” (Gramophone Magazine), and “fascinatingly strange” (BBC Music Magazine), award-winning composer Arthur Gottschalk is Professor of Music Composition and Theory at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. With the number of compositions in his catalog now over two hundred, his music is regularly performed domestically and overseas, and his works are recorded and distributed on Navona, New Ariel, Crystal Records, Summit, Capstone, Beauport Classical, ERMMedia, AURecordings, Golden Crest, MSR Classics, Ablaze Records, Naxos, Amirani (Italy), and Delage (France). His works are published by Subito Music, Shawnee Press, European American Music Distributors, Alea Publishing, Trevco Music, Potenza Music, Delage Musique, and The Spectrum Press. His book, Functional Hearing, is published by Scarecrow Press, a division of Rowman and Littlefield.
Dr. Gottschalk has worked in diverse areas of music, including composing and arranging music for feature films, television scores, numerous industrial films and commercials, music publishing, and artist management. He continues to work as an expert in music copyright cases and as a forensic musicologist.
His Concerto for Violin and Symphonic Winds won the First Prize of the VVX Concorso Internazionale di Composizione Originale (Corciano, Italy), and he has been awarded the prestigious Bogliasco Fellowship for additional work in Italy. Further awards include the Charles Ives Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold medal, Best in Show, and Top Recording of 2015 for Music Composition from the Global Music Awards (for his Requiem: For the Living), composer residencies at the famed Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, and annual awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers since 1980.
A student of renowned American composers William Bolcom, Ross Lee Finney, and Leslie Bassett, Dr. Gottschalk carries on this important lineage by producing students who compose original and innovative music in various forums throughout the world.