DEPAUW NEWS ARCHIVE

Symphony features five student winners of Annual DePauw Concerto Competition 

The DePauw Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Orcenith Smith, will present the winners of the Annual DePauw Concerto Competition on Sunday, April 16, at 3 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center, Kresge Auditorium. The concert is free and open to the public.

Featured soloists are Stephanie Lin of West Lafayette, Ind., a second-year pianist, playing the "Totentanz" by Franz Liszt; senior soprano Kaimi Blaha of Portage, Ind., singing "The Trees on the Mountains" from the opera "Susannah" by American composer Carlisle Floyd; first-year oboist Holly Somers of Tulsa, Okla., playing Vaughan Williams' Oboe Concerto; second-year soprano JennyRebecca Winans of Leavenworth, Kan., singing "Mi chiamano Mimi" from Puccini's "La Boheme;" and third-year pianist Rachel Busch of Littleton, Colo., in Bela Bartok's Third Piano Concerto. Lin and Busch are previous competition winners. Blaha and Winans were featured leads in DePauw's Opera Productions.

The competition, a collaboration between the DePauw School of Music and the DePauw Symphony Orchestra, is held in late February. It features two rounds of contest with a preliminary round in each discipline judged by DePauw faculty; the second round of full competition is judged by music professionals from outside the school.

"We are very pleased to present these excellent young musicians in a solo capacity with the orchestra in a performance," said Music Director Smith. "From a large group of entrants in all of the categories, including piano, voice, strings, winds and brass, the winners of this year's competition show how taking one's talent and dedicating yourself to the concepts of excellence can be rewarded."

The final performance of the academic year for the DePauw Symphony Orchestra will be Franz Josef Haydn's "Lord Nelson" Mass, featuring DePauw Festival Choirs with faculty and student soloists. That free performance is Sunday, May 7, at 3 p.m.