Talented Students Earn Nearly $40,000 at Crescendo
Talented Students Earn Nearly $40,000 at Crescendo
OVERTURE RECEPTION: In celebration of the 10th Crescendo Music Awards, the Rotary Club of Tulsa held a celebration at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. Members of the steering committee in attendance are, from left: Wanda Hartman, Linda Bradshaw, Committee Chairman Jerry Muratore, Founder and Chief Competition Judge Joseph Bias and Cory Nickerson.
GTR Newspapers photo
Rotary Club of Tulsa held its 10th Annual Crescendo Music Awards April 10-12 at the Van Trease Performing Arts Center for Education on the campus of Tulsa Community College Southeast Campus. The Crescendo Music Awards is designed to give gifted young musicians an opportunity to compete. High school juniors and seniors as well as college undergraduate students were eligible for the program.
Preliminary rounds were held April 10-12, with the finals concert taking place on the evening of April 12. Cash prizes totaling almost $40,000 were awarded.
Winners in the Brass and Woodwinds Division were a sweep of students from Oklahoma State University that included Brandon Dyer, who won the Gold Award; Isaac Washam, winning the Silver Award; and Jason Cash, who won the Bronze Award.
The String Division winners included Eric Chin from San Francisco Conservatory of Music winning the Gold; Emily Nenniger, also from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, won the Silver; and Michael Kaufman from Eastman School of Music won the Bronze.
In the Piano Division, winners included Sun Min Kim, Eastman School of Music, Gold; Xu Han, Manhattan School of Music, Silver; and Zhang Cheng, Texas Christian University, Bronze.
In the Vocal Division, the winners were Jonathan Wimpy, Baylor University, Gold; Ben Gully, University of Missouri at Kansas City, Silver; and Colby Walker, Northeastern State University, Bronze.
Each of the Gold winners in the College Division received a cash award of $5,000, while the Silver winners received $2,000 and Bronze winners $1,000. Earlier in the week, $5,100 was awarded to High School Division students.
The Crescendo Music Awards program is a function of the Rotary Club of Tulsa, the ninth largest of over 32,000 Rotary Clubs in the world. The active membership serves on 36 committees, supporting worthwhile projects such as the Nicaragua Water Well Project, International Wheel Chair Project, Polio Plus, International Youth Exchange, Camp Enterprise, Adopt-A-School and others.
Through the generosity of its members, the Rotary Club of Tulsa’s Community Fund has grown to almost $2 million, with earnings from that fund supporting a multitude of community projects in the Greater Tulsa area.
The Crescendo Music Awards Competition was founded in the spring of 1999 with a budget of $1,500. In that first year, 11 high school and college students auditioned for a jury of six Rotarians. Three were called back to perform for the entire club and cash prizes were awarded. Now in its 10th season, over 500 students have auditioned and more than $132,000 has been awarded as cash prizes to talented young musicians.
In addition to the almost $35,000 awarded in the 2007 competition, Dr. Esther Jane Hardenbergh, assistant professor of voice at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami, awarded a scholarship to the University of Miami’s summer program for vocalists and pianists in Salzburg, Austria to Juan Galvan, winner of the vocal competition. Galvan, a tenor, attends the University of North Texas.
Updated 04-25-2008
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