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Youth Concerto Winners Announced Thursday, June 25, 2009 Juneau Empire The winners of the Juneau Symphony's 2009 Youth Concerto Competition have been announced: David Miller and Finn Sinclair. The competition was held June 10 at Northern Light United Church, and was open to young musicians in Southeast Alaska. Miller, 14, won first place in the senior division, with Mozart's violin concerto No. 3 in G major. Sinclair, 10, won first place in the junior division with Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor by Accolay. Second place in the senior division went to Carrie Comstock, who played Concerto in D Major by Haydn. Second place in the junior division went to Alaska's Kit who sang "Into the West." Miller, Sinclair and Alaska's Kit have been invited to perform with the Juneau Student Symphony during its 2009-2010 season. Both Miller and Sinclair study violin with Guo Hua Xia and are IDEA homeschooled students. The judges commended all of the musicians for their excellent performances. The next competition will be held in June 2010. Original Story: www.juneauempire.com/stories/062509/ent_454404871.shtml |
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Photo: Sweet string music Monday, February 09, 2009 Juneau Empire  Franz Felkl, standing, the 2008 Solo with Orchestra Competition winner, plays Felix Mendelssohn's "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 64" with the Juneau Symphony at the Juneau-Douglas High School auditorium during Sunday's afternoon concert.
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Felkl and Seid win 2008 concerto competition Thursday, June 12, 2008 Juneau Empire Franz Felkl and Ethan Seid are the winners of the Juneau Symphony's 2008 Solo with Orchestra Competition. The competition was held June 4 at the Northern Light United Church. Felkl won first place in the senior division with Mendelssohn's "Concerto No. 1" on the violin. He has been invited to perform his concerto with the Juneau Symphony during its 2008-09 season. Seid won first place in the junior division with Bach's "Concerto in A Minor" on the violin. He has been invited to perform with the Juneau Student Symphony during its upcoming season. Honorable mention went to Margaret Ross who performed Beethoven's "Concerto No. 1" on the piano. She also will play with the Juneau Student Symphony next season. The judges commended all of the musicians for their excellent performances. The next competition will be held in June 2009. The winner of the 2007 Solo with Orchestra Competition, Stephen Young, will perform at the Juneau Symphony's Celebrating Alaska concerts on June 14-15. Young will play Vaughan Williams' "Tuba Concerto," the first concerto ever written for the tuba.
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Photo: Solo with Orchestra Competition Friday, June 13, 2008 Juneau Empire  From left, Margaret Ross, Franz Felkl and Ethan Seid pose as winners of the Juneau Symphony's 2008 Solo with Orchestra Competition on June 4 at Northern Light United Church. Felkl won first place in thesenior division. He has been invited to perform his concerto with the Juneau Symphony during their 2008-09 season. Seid won first place in thejunior division and has been invited to perform with the Juneau Student Symphony during theirupcoming season. Honorable mention went to Ross, who also will play piano with the Juneau StudentSymphony next season.
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Young soloists: Felkl, Kreiss-Tompkins star in Juneau Symphony opener By KORRY KEEKER JUNEAU EMPIRE Juneau-Douglas High School freshman Franz Felkl and Sitka High School junior Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins take center stage this weekend as the featured soloists in the opening concert of the Juneau Symphony's 2005-2006 season. 
The two students were co-winners of the symphony's June 4 Solo with Orchestra Competition, and in a remarkable twist, both won with selections by the Romantic-era German composer Max Bruch. Felkl will play the "Violin Concerto in G Minor," one of the most popular Romantic-era violin concertos of all time. Kreiss-Tomkins will play cello on "Kol Nidre," a traditional Jewish tune based on a chant for Yom Kippur. "It was a wonderful coincidence," Juneau Symphony conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett said, of the shared interest in Bruch. "These are the strongest youth concerto winners we've ever had, and I think people will be really impressed. They play with an emotional maturity that's definitely above their age." The season openers - 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30, at Juneau-Douglas High School - also include Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" from the opera "Peter Grimes" and Beethoven's "Symphony No. 7," the grand finale. "Britten grew up on the ocean and lived on the ocean and when he set out to write this opera he wanted to write about the struggles of men and women who make their living from the ocean," Wiley Pickett said. "All four of them just fit so well with Juneau. You get the dawn with the early morning, and Sunday morning with church bells and the moonlight and then the storm. Everybody can relate to the settings." Beethoven began the "Symphony No. 7 in A Major" in 1811 while on sabbatical in Teplica, a spa town in the modern-day Slovak Republic. He completed the work in 1812 and it premiered Dec. 8, 1913, in Vienna, with Beethoven conducting. The piece is known for its spry, quasi-danceable rhythms and its unexpected shifts, but it was rather ahead of its time. Upon hearing it, the composer Carl Maria von Weber famously said Beethoven was "now quite ripe for the madhouse." "The 'madhouse' statement is because Beethoven used what would have been considered to be really strange keys," Wiley Pickett said. "Every key that you play has sort of its own solar system - its own group of neighbor keys. Beethoven went pretty far outside of that solar system in this piece. The effect is there's just a nice sense of release of tension that's really neat." "The 7th symphony is the most modern symphony, and it doesn't really sound that way to us, because it's hard for anything to sound modern after you've heard the 'Rites of Spring' or something like that," he said. "But he was really pushing the boundaries of what had been done at the time. In fact I think everyone who came after him, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Schumann, Schubert, they all owe a lot to the 7th symphony." Bruch (1838-1920), a German composer, wrote more than 200 works but may be best known for the "Violin Concerto in G minor," one of the most popular Romantic-era violin concertos of all time. Felkl was also a co-winner of the 2002 Solo with Orchestra Competition and was the featured soloist in Haydn's "Violin Concerto No. 1 in C" during the symphony's 40th anniversary concert, April 4-5, 2003. Now 14, he's been a regular section violinist in the orchestra for the last year. Felkl has played violin for 10 years. His teacher, Guo Hua Xia, suggested the "Concerto in G Minor" about a year ago. The symphony performed the piece at its Feb. 3, 2001, show, with Linda Rosenthal as the featured soloist. "It's just a great piece with a lot of emotion, and you can put a lot of yourself into the piece," Felkl said. "People do it lots of different ways. I listened to recordings and then took off and did what I felt was right." Kreiss-Tomkins, 16, performed with the symphony as a section cellist this January. He's been studying cello for four years and also plays bass and oboe in his high school's jazz band and wind ensemble. His teacher, Roger Schmidt, recommended "Kol Nidre," a traditional Jewish tune based on a chant for Yom Kippur. Bruch was a Protestant but enjoyed arranging European folk songs of various traditions. "It was just the same as playing a piece from a period of music that I've never played before," said Kreiss-Tomkins, of taking on a traditional tune. "It combines very melodic and beautiful fluid harmonies with fast and intense, passionate parts. It kind of has it all. It really displays a lot of possibilities with the cello."
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Symphony solos at stake in Sunday youth concerto By KORRY KEEKER JUNEAU EMPIRE Years ago, there was just one winner of the Juneau Symphony's annual Solo with Orchestra Competition. In 2002, there were two. And last year, there were three. "It all depends on the quality of musicians, and what the judges see," said symphony board member and youth committee chair Mary Ann Dlugosch. "Last year was probably the best I've ever seen. There were several musicians of very high quality, and a lot of different instruments. The judges had a tough decision." Nine musicians, ages 9 to 17, will compete in this year's event, 2 p.m. Sunday, May 2, at the University of Alaska Southeast's Hendrickson Hall. The show is free and will last one to two hours. A panel of three judges will award the winner, or winners, with a solo during a performance of the Juneau Symphony or Juneau Student Symphony. In 2003, pianist Bryan Diebels won a solo with the Juneau Symphony. Violinist Pauline Zheng and cellist Hunter Brown earned solos with the student symphony. Frank Felkl and Nina Schwinghammer won the 2002 competition. "It's possible to have two really outstanding players and for them both to perform with the symphony," Dlugosch said. "There's a lot of discretion on the part of the judges to decide whether one or two or none will play with the Juneau Symphony. They're looking for the accuracy of the notes that are played. They're looking for interpretation. They're looking for rhythm and stage presence." Symphony conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett is usually a judge but will be unable to attend. He hopes to listen to an audio feed from his home in California. The contest is limited to high school juniors and younger. All selections must be pieces that an orchestra can play. Competitors can win more than once in their school career. The entrants: • David Miller, "Violin Concerto No. 5, 1st movement," F. Seitz • Maggie Ross, "Piano Concerto No. 21, 2nd movement," W.A. Mozart • Benjamin Weyhrauch, "Piano Concerto No. 3, 1st movement," D. Kabalevsky • Lindsay Clark, "Violin Concerto No. 23 in G Major," G. Viotti • Andrew Sigler, "Violin Concerto No. 1 in a minor, 1st movement," J.B. Accolay • Isabel Bush, "Piano Concerto in D Major, 1st movement," J. Haydn • Abraham D. Levy, "Piano Concerto in a minor, 1st movement," E. Grieg • Megan Bush, "Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, 1st movement," W. A. Mozart • Agatha Erickson, "Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra," N. Rimsky-Korsakov
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Violist, violinist win symphony's youth competition Juneau - Franz Felkl and Nina Schwinghammer are the winners of the Juneau Symphony's 2002 Solo with Orchestra Competition. Felkl, a fifth-grader at Auke Bay Elementary, played the first movement from Accolay's "Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor." He will perform with the Juneau Symphony at its April 6, 2003, concert. Schwinghammer, a sophomore at JuneauDouglas High School, will perform the second movement of Telemann's "Viola Concerto in G Major" with the Juneau Student Symphony this fall. The competition on April 7 featured four young musicians. In addition to Felkl and Schwinghammer, Pauline Zheng and Peter Jorgensen played movements from Vivaldi's "Violin Concerto in A minor." The competition was judged by Juneau Symphony music director Kyle Wiley Pickett, Thrushhill Music School teacher and Youth Symphony conductor Rick Trostel, and Lisa Miles, owner and violin instructor at The Heartstring, a local Suzuki school. The competition is open to all young musicians in Southeast. Applications for the 2003 competition will be available in January. For more information, contact the symphony at 586-4676.
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Fourteen-year-old pianist Daniel Wallen Gruenberg won the Juneau Symphony's 2001 Solo with Orchestra Competition held Sunday at the University of Alaska Southeast. Gruenberg, who played the 13-minute first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17, will perform it with the Juneau Symphony at its winter concert next season. Gruenberg, an eighth-grader at Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School, was accompanied by Mary Watson, his piano instructor. "I was a bit nervous, but the nervousness is before you get up there," Gruenberg said of the event, his first competition. "And when you're up there, you lose yourself in the music." The competition "lets people like me - and it helps me - to put myself forward, to take the risk, either win or lose," he said. Symphony administrator Jetta Whittaker said, "It's been several years since we've had a pianist win the competition, so we're excited about accompanying him." Also competing Sunday were two 10-year-old violinists in the fourth grade. Andrew Sigler played the first movement of Seitz's Concerto No. 5, and Franz Felkl played the third movement of Vivaldi's Concerto in A minor. Both are violin students of Guo Hua Xia and were accompanied by pianist Sue Kazama. "They did very, very well," Xia said. "The main thing is training them to meet the challenge." Sigler has studied with Xia for three years, and Felkl for four-and-a-half years. "They are very young. When they grow up they can do something very easily because they have this experience," Xia said. "Each player played wonderfully," said Juneau Symphony Music Director Kyle Wiley Pickett, who was one of the judges. "It was difficult to select just one winner. Juneau should be very proud of its music students, and music teachers as well." Also judging the competition were Ken Leghorn, a member of the symphony's first violin section, and Elizabeth Evans, a longtime piano teacher in Juneau. The student competition has been held for more than 10 years, Whittaker said. "It's such a thrill to play with the orchestra," Watson said. "And it's just great for the kids to do that. It changes them once it's done. It's a confidence boost." |
Concerto competition is set for this Sunday Thursday, September 24, 1998 Juneau Empire The Juneau Symphony's annual Solo with Orchestra Competition begins at 2 p.m. Sunday at Hendrickson Hall at the University of Alaska Southeast. This performance of classical music is free and open to the public. Nine music students from Southeast communities, including Petersburg, Hoonah and Sitka as well as Juneau, will compete for the opportunity to play as soloists with the Juneau Symphony. ``It's actually a good concert, with all the different composers,'' said Jetta Whittaker of the Juneau Symphony. Students will perform works by Grieg, Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach and DeBeriot this weekend. All will have piano accompaniment. Seven violinists, a pianist and a clarinetist will compete. Last year's winners were violinists Yun Xia and Mackenzie Slater, and they performed Lalo's ``Symphonie Espagnaole,'' and Haydn's ``Violin Concerto No. 2.'' ``They're allowed to do whatever's at their level,'' said Whittaker. The winners will perform with the Juneau Symphony on Dec. 4 and 5. |
