Congratulations to all the participants of the 2019 Chopin Festival! Here are the results from our adjudicated event.

Thank you for participating in the 2019 Piano Duo Festival! The event was held on Saturday, February 23 at Greene Music. Students, teachers and families enjoyed the beautiful piano duet music performed by 14 teams in 6 different age-division categories. The Duo Festival chair Dan Yu made all pre-event arrangements and organized the schedule, and on the event day, my MTAC colleague Carol Ong-Chen was an indispensable help to run the two recitals back to back. Thank you to students, parents, and all participating teachers for making it a successful event. The following studios were represented: Eunice Ahn, Eunji Bae, Lee Galloway, Yu Carole Liu, Victor Labenske, Carol Ong-Chen, Galina Talis, and Anna Vasilyeva. Special thanks to our adjudicators Steve Baker and Sanaz Rezai.

Here are the results and photos from the event. Congratulations to all participants. We hope you join us again next year.

Congratulations to all the participants in this year’s Concerto Competition! 

I want to give a special thank you to Sarah Victor, who was my assistant both days, Dana Burnett for preparing the warm-up schedules both days, Lori Vickers, Sun Yung Cho, Alexander Mirolyan, Stacey Liao and Michael Tseitlin for providing pastries and fruit for judges.  I also want to thank USD’s Department of Music for generously sponsoring this event! 

I would also like to express my gratitude to our panel of judges this year:

PIANO: Wan-Chin Chang, Gema Garcia, Mark Gutierrez
WINDS: Beth Ross Buckley, Pamela Vliek Martchev, James Romeo
STRINGS: Elizabeth Brown, Paivikki Nykter, Philip Tyler

Here are the results and photos. Winners performances with orchestra will be announced very soon.

Members may login to view the results with full names below:

There were 265 participants in the 2018 Sonata Contest and I am so grateful for all of those who helped to make this a successful day. First, a very big thank you to MTAC members: Mitzi Kolar, Chutaphin Yeager, Miriam Cole, Jacki Summers, Brian Goral, Lynn Sundfor-McPherson, Magdi Bornemisza, Stuart Thurston, Dan Yu, Sarah Victor, Angelina Hardy, Yuko Maruyama and Hua Wang for their help on the day of the contest and in the preparations for the event.

Thank you to the following volunteers whose help was invaluable: Abby Vickers, David Rudolph, Priscilla Ling, Chelsea Clements, Kevin Korevaar Patty Rudolph, Nancy McClintock, Evan and Austin Killeen, Aurora Gryzbek Renee Chang, Paul Otterson, Han-Min Kim, Jonathan Backues and Leslie Lucas.

Another big thank you to Eric Vickers for his computer technical expertise, and for his encouragement and support with running this event!

Finally, none of this would be possible without the constant help of Dr. Mitzi Kolar and Chutaphin Yeager who worked tirelessly on this and previous years’ contests. Thanks also to San Diego State University for their generous hospitality allowing us to use their facility.

The judges for this year were: Sharon Townsend-Roth (Glendale), Rob and Teri Watson (Fullerton), Matilda Rudolph (Vista), Sanaz Rezai (Los Angeles), Mark Mendez (Montebello), Laurie Meinhold (Aliso Viejo), Jo Ellen Vandruff (Orange) and Erika Ramos (Redlands).

Happy Holidays to all of you and we hope to see you next year.

Please login to view the 2018 Sonata Results below: