By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
In a serious competition among groups of some of the best musicians in the College of Musical Arts, what set the winners apart is they seemed to be having fun.
The Douglas Wayland Chamber Music Competition was held this weekend in the Moore Musical Arts Center on the Bowling Green State University campus.
Lydia Qiu, a pianist from the University Michigan, was one of three judges on the panel for the finals held Sunday. “These two groups really enjoyed playing together,” she said of the Epsilon Quartet, the undergraduate winners, and Pitnix, a trio that won the graduate division.
Pitnix was a repeat winner. Two of the members of the trio – Samantha Tartamella, flute, and Stephen Dubetz, clarinet – were in the ensemble when it won the undergraduate division. This year with another pianist, Emily Morin, they had to compete in the graduate division because Morin is a graduate student. Still the result was the same.
Dubetz also won the undergraduate division in December’s Competitions in Musical Performance.
Epsilon Quartet
The Epsilon Quartet, a saxophone foursome of Jacob Braslawsce, soprano, Nicole Grimone, alto, Tess Marjanovic, tenor, and Andrew Hosler, baritone, is the newest in a line of saxophone quartets to do well in the event. At least one saxophone quartet has been among the winners in all but one competition since its start in 2007.
Second place in the graduate division went to Landlocked Percussion – Henrique Batista, Scott Charvet, Nicholas Fox, and Felix Reyes.
Second place in the undergraduate went to the Derevo Quintet – Thomas Morris, oboe, Hayden Giesseman, clarinet, Brianna Buck, saxophone, Jack Smolenski, bassoon, and Anton Skojac, bass clarinet.
The ensemble was pulled together by Morris, who was inspired by a quintet with this unusual instrumentation that he heard on YouTube.
Buck, who was in a second place saxophone quartet last year, said she was intrigued by the chance to play in a woodwind ensemble.
Playing with students from different studios gives a musician a chance to learn the qualities of each of the other instruments, and how best to complement them.
The Wayland Competition is training for real life, she said. The ensembles must work together to perfect the music and then present it, she said. That chance to perform is one of the attractions for Buck. “You don’t often get the chance to perform when you’re an undergraduate,” she said. “So it’s a great opportunity to prepare yourself for real life.”
The winning ensembles get additional performance opportunities. They will play at the Toledo Museum of Art, Sunday, April 9 at 3 p.m. and Tuesday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m. at the Manor House in Wildwood Metropark in Toledo. They will also play on WGTE-FM at an April date still to be determined.
Members of the winning of the competition, which is presented by Pro Musica, also win cash awards – $200 for each member of the first place ensembles and $100 for each member of the second place ensembles.
Brian Snow, who coordinated the event with Dan Piccolo, said that having an in-house competition for students is fairly unusual.
Piccolo said most often it is an event open to performers from outside the school.
Here the students get to compete against their BGSU peers for outside judges. Different judges were used for Saturday’s semifinals and Sunday’s finals.
“They get some feedback form outside ears,” Piccolo said.
They agreed that students are already involved in chamber music, and the Wayland Competition encourages them to do even more.
Participation was about what it was last year, with about 60 musicians performing in 17 trios, quartets, and quintets.
“It’s a long day for the judges,” Snow said.
Qiu said she was impressed by the six ensembles in the finals – three in each division. “The level is very high, and some of the repertoire choices are extraordinarily difficult.”
Yet there remained a sense of play in the performances.
“The saxophone quartet looked happy when they played with each other,” she said.
Pitnix brought the sound of three distinctive instruments together. “That showed me they were very good listeners,” she said.
“At one point they went from very loud, very loud to very soft almost in unison and perfectly in tune.”
As a pianist whose specialty is collaborating with vocalists, she was especially attuned to the work of Morin. “The pianist is a super musician,” Qiu said. “She plays her part brilliantly and then takes care of the other members. That’s awesome.”
Joining Qiu on Sunday were Kirk Toth, concertmaster of the Toledo Symphony, and Mingzhe Wang, Michigan State University. Susan Keith Gray and Marie-Elaine Gagnon, both from University of South Dakota, Kristin Reynolds, Eastern Michigan University, and Jonathan Ovalle, University of Michigan, judged on Saturday.
Landlocked percussion
Derevo Quintet
