Five students win concerto competition

Home Culture Five students win concerto competition

Last Sunday, five students were announced as winners of Hillsdale’s Annual Student Concerto/Aria Competition.

Sophomore Stevan Lukich and senior Hannah Taylor were named Grand Prize Winners and will have the opportunity to play a concert with the orchestra on May 7. Junior Taylor Flowers, senior Kirsten Hall, and senior Claire Ziegler
were also named winners and will play in a concert accompanied by the orchestra on March 5.

Twenty-one students auditioned for the competition on Jan. 21 in front of three guest judges: Sarah Cranor, a 2007 Hillsdale graduate, Dr. Leon Gregorian, a professor of music at Michigan State University, and Dr. David Abbott, a professor of piano at Albion College.

Gregorian said he found the two grand prize winners to be very good, and was impressed by the students’ musical capabilities as a whole group.

“We heard about 20 performers and I was shocked to find out that only two were music majors,” Gregorian said.
James Holleman, professor of music at Hillsdale, said he enjoys having guest judges at this competition because it gives the music program a chance to open its doors and show the quality of its students. Holleman said the guest judges also provide objectivity, something that would be hard for the Hillsdale’s music faculty to bring to the table if they judged their own students.

Instrumental variety abounds among the winners: Lukich plays the violin; Taylor the oboe. Flowers plays the piano, Hall plays the flute, and Ziegler is a soprano.

The students chose their audition pieces last semester, and went through the necessary steps to get the pieces approved for audition. The students will play the pieces they auditioned with in their upcoming concerts, while being accompanied by a full orchestra.

Lukich played “Scottish Fantasy,” a composition for violin and orchestra composed by Max Bruch.

“I’m really excited and really grateful to perform this piece with orchestra,” he said. “When you can play a piece with the orchestra you really get the composer’s intentions, the whole picture of the piece.”

Ziegler and Flowers, who were also winners of last year’s competition, agreed that playing with the orchestra is an amazing experience. Ziegler called it “a whole other world,” while Flowers said it was “exhilarating.” Both are excited for their second concert.

Taylor chose to play “Oboe Concerto in One Movement,” composed by Eugene Goossens.

“There’s a variety of different colors and tones in the piece. There’s aggressive sections and lyrical sections. There’s just a full range of notes in general for the oboe,” Taylor said. “It’s probably the flashiest oboe piece that there is.”