By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The BGSU College of Musical Arts’ Douglas Wayland Chamber Music Competition made its face-to-face return from the pandemic Saturday.
The dozen small ensembles, five in the undergraduate division and seven in the graduate, division, competed in a single round, with the panel of four judges announcing their decisions at the end.
The winners for the 15th Wayland competition are:
- First in the Undergraduate Division, Kairos Reed Quintet — Amanda Withrow, oboe and English horn, Jacob Wolf, clarinet, Elizabeth Mumford, saxophone, Brandon Golpe, bassoon, and Justin Brown, bass clarinet.
- Second in the Undergraduate Division, Hansen Trio – Brown, clarinet, Abigail Petersen, piano, and Joshua Lyphout, cello.
- First in the Graduate Division, Rosarium Quartet – Josh Tuttle, Joshua Heaney, Carl Ng, and Violet Meltzer, saxophones
- Second in the Graduate Division, Trichrome – Sarah Curtiss, flute, Josh Tuttle saxophone, and Vivian Chan, piano.
“Everyone sounded really amazing,” said Solomon Liang, one of the four judges. What distinguishes the best ensembles “is having … a single voice, a sense of unity and communication with each other. That sticks out right away.”
Fellow judge Megan Shusta said that was true of the Rosarium Quartet. “We were really impressed with their communication. Everything was super well prepared and thought through, beginning to end. Their pieces had such a good arc and good climax. It was just really exciting to listen to them. For them, we were in agreement right away. We were just blown away.”
Overall, she said, “this was a great day. It was really exciting music. Every group really went for it and was brave and that pays off.”
“Every group had its own styles and ideas and we really loved it,” Liang added.
Shusta is the principal horn of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, and Liang is a violinist with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. They were joined on the judges panel by Dennis Carter, principal flute in the Dearborn Symphony and the Michigan Philharmonic, and Nicholas Hutchinson, DePaul University opera and voice faculty.
William Mathis, dean of the College of Musical Arts, said the event was another way to “highlight and feature our best musicians.”
He added: “It’s an opportunity for our best students to really shine in an area where they can be entrepreneurial. Many of these ensembles are not part of the curriculum. They’re doing it on their own.” Each ensemble does have a faculty coach.
All this is in keeping with the vision of Doug Wayland, a member of the voice faculty and active in the Pro Musica, who died in November 2013. He founded the event as a way to showcase primarily instrumentalists as a complement to the Conrad Art Song Competition, which features singers and pianists.
Mathis said this also complements the college’s concerto contest, Competitions in Musical Performance.
Chamber music has its own particular satisfactions. For Liang it is “the joy of playing with your colleagues, to be able to come up with something everyone is happy with, and being able to present that to the audience.”
Pro Musica, a support group for the College of Musical Arts, continues to provide the prize money – $200 for each member of the first place wining ensemble and $100 for each member of the second place ensemble.
The winning ensembles also get additional performing opportunities.
Friday, April 1, at 10 a.m. members of the ensemble will be guests on “Live from FM91” on WGTE. Recordings of Saturday’s performances will be played.
The four winning ensembles will then perform Sunday, April 3 at 3 p.m. in the Toledo Museum of Art.
