An enthusiastic audience turned out Saturday evening at Sunset Center to enjoy the 8:00 pm Awards Concert featuring the three winners of the Carmel Music Society’s 2016 Piano Competition. This competition is open to pianists between the ages of 18 and 30, who live, study or were born in California, Oregon and Washington. There were 27 applicants who submitted audition CDs, and an audition committee consisting of CMS board members Barbara Ruzicka, Rudolf Schroeter & Erik Dyar listened to the CDs and narrowed the field down to the six finalists heard during the morning and afternoon competition.

The Society’s President, Dr. Anne Thorp, welcomed the audience and introduced the competition judges, Heidi Hau, a member of the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (and the First Prize Winner in the 1998-99 Carmel Music Society’s  Piano Competition), Jung-Ho Pak, Conductor of the Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra (also a resident of Carmel Valley) and Dr. Anatole Leikin, Professor of Music and Department Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dr. Thorp presented the awards on stage. The Grand Prize, consisting of $5000, which in part includes an opportunity to perform in 2017 as part of the Carmel Music Society’s subscription series, was awarded to 21-year-old Man-Ling Bai, a student at California State University Fullerton, where she studies piano with Mr. Ning An on full scholarship. The second prize of $2000 was awarded to Misha Galant, 18, who will be attending Columbia University this coming fall as one of eight students accepted into its joint exchange program with Juilliard this year. The third prize was awarded to Dongni Xie, 26, a DMA candidate studying this fall with Pamela Mia Paul at the University of North Texas College of Music (on a full scholarship plus a Teaching Fellowship). During the awards concert, the young prizewinners were scheduled to play in reverse order with the Grand Prize Winner ending the evening’s program. Read full story →