Violinist Marena Miki won the Alfred Newman Memorial Award and will perform with the Palisades Symphony.
The winners of the 2023 Palisades Symphony Young Artists competition will perform with the symphony at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 11, at the Palisades Lutheran Church, 15905 Sunset Boulevard. The concert, under the direction of conductor Joel Lish, is free.
Young instrumentalists in grades 2 through 12, are invited to audition in the spring for scholarships and the chance to perform with the symphony.
Violist Nathaniel Shpigelmacher is a fifth grader at the New World Montessori School. He received the Eva Holberg Endowment Award and will play the first movement of Kabalevsky’s Violin Concerto Op. 48.
Receiving the top award for middle school was Harvard-Westlake seventh grader Alexander Yang, will play the first movement of Schumann’s Piano Concerto Op. 54.
Juniors and seniors participating in the concert this year are pianists Landon Fringer (Santa Monica High School), who will play the second and third movement of Mozart’s Piano Concert #20 in D Minor, Audrey Yang (Harvard-Westlake) playing the first movement of Rachmanioff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 Op. 18, and Robert Shlyakhtenko (Sky Mountain Charter School), who will play the first movement of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor Op.16.
The violinists performing this year are Camila Blank (Archer School for Girls), who will perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor Op. 64 and Marena Miki playing Sibelious Violin Concerto Op. 47.
Miki, a Crossroads senior won the Alfred Newman Memorial Award this year. The Director’s Award went to Shlyakhtenko, and Fringer won the David Marshal Meyer Memorial Award.
This is the 51st year of The Young Artists competition, which was first held in 1972.
In 2021 and 2022, the competition was held via online with students submitting instrumentalist videos on YouTube. This will be the first live concert that has been held since 2020.
The mission of the Palisades Symphony is to make classical music accessible to audiences, provide musicians with the opportunity to perform and contemporary composers with a forum to have their works featured. Tax-deductible contributions are welcome and help defray the cost of the rental and performance space, Young Artist awards, printing and postage, and payments for the conductors and soloists.
If you would like to help these free concerts stay in this community, consider mailing a check to the Palisades Symphony to P.O. Box 214, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272. The tax ID # is 237092960.