By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The musical competition season ended Saturday with the 16th Douglas Wayland Chamber Competition.
The event featuring student musicians performing in small ensembles is the newest of the College of Musical Arts competitions.
The oldest is the Competitions in Musical performance that dates to the mid- 1960s. In the event, individual performers vie for an opportunity to perform with either the BG Philharmonia or the Wind Symphony. The competitions also now include a composition award and the Virginia Marks Collaborative Piano Award.
The Conrad Art Song Competition was founded with an endowment Dr. Marjorie Conrad, a lover of music, who later in life returned to studying music. The competition honors both the singer and the pianist with the cash prizes shared equally between them. It marked its 23rd year in March.
[RELATED: Conrad Art Song Competition spotlights musical magic]
The Wayland competition is the newest. It was founded by the late Douglas Wayland, who taught voice in the College of Musical Arts, as a way of giving instrumentalists a similar experience as singers have with the Conrad. Singers though can participate and have in the small ensembles.
This competition season has been very good for pianists Stephen Eckert, a first-year doctoral student, and Abigail Petersen, a sophomore music performance major. They took top honors in all three competitions.
Eckert was a member of the Spectra Trio with Shannon Lotti, flute, and Anthony Marchese cello, which was awarded first prize in the graduate division.
Petersen was the pianist for Trio Carminis with flutist Hallie O’Loughlin and clarinetist Justin Brown, which won the undergraduate division.
Second place honorees were: in the undergraduate division, piJAJJ, Andrew Jenkins and James Franklin, euphonium, and James DeMetropolis and Jonah Gillbert, tuba; and in the graduate division, the BGSU Graduate Tuba Quartet, Ben Sallard, Bill Lommel, Ana Leach, and Anthony Roldan.
Geoffrey Johnson, an oboist from Western Michigan University, said he and the other three judges were impressed by all the ensembles. “Everyone played very well,” he said. “We were overall very pleased.”
The blend of the two low brass ensembles set them apart, Johnson said. “They had great tone and pitch.”
He added: “The winning groups did a great job of passing the melodies and phrases to each other. That’s what really set them apart.”
The other judges were: John Madison, principal viola, Detroit Opera Orchestra; Amy I-Lin Cheng, assistant professor of piano, University of Michigan; and Kiisi Maunula Johnson, horn, University of Akron.
Petersen said she felt “had really good chemistry.”
Brown noted that he and Petersen played in another trio in the 2022 Wayland competition and placed second in the undergraduate division.
Petersen intends to continue working in chamber ensembles as she pursues a career in collaborative piano.
Eckert and Lotti, also a first-year doctoral student, have been working together in a duo.
Lotti said they wanted to do the competition. “It’s sort of a big deal around the school,” Eckert said. “People look forward to it.”
They tapped fellow doctoral student Marchese. “I always want to play chamber music,” he said.
Eckert said the two pieces they performed – “Cendres” by contemporary Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and the first movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Trio 1 in D minor – were selected because they offered “the best contrast and were the most impressive that would show all of us off.”
The winning ensembles will perform in the Toledo Museum of Art Great Gallery Sunday, April 23 at 3 p.m.
The Conrad Art Song winners will perform a week earlier, Sunday, April 16, at 3 p.m., also in the Great Gallery.
