Austin Receives Standing Ovation at Viterbo University!

As the winner of the prestigious regional “Rising Stars Concerto Competition” of the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra in January, Austin Frohmader performed last Saturday night to a near-full house of eleven hundred concert goers at the Theatre of Viterbo University, La Crosse Wisconsin.  He received a wildly enthusiastic standing ovation from the audience.  This marvelous opportunity to perform on a subscription concert of the La Crosse Symphony was part of his Anna Beth Culver Award, which also included a $2,000 monetary award.  We look forward with great anticipation for a DVD of the performance from the La Crosse Symphony.  Hopefully, we will be able to share it with everyone right here on our web-site.  There is no rest for Austin as he left the next day for Bloomington, Indiana to interview for scholarship at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.  It is one of the most prestigious music schools in the land, and the world’s largest.  Next week, he is off to Houston where he will audition for Nancy Weems at the University of Houston (where Kenny Broberg and Joshua Tan are currently full-scholarship students), and at Rice University.  Just as he returns the final weekend of the month, he will leap head-long into a taxing week of a dress rehearsal and six performances with our world-renowned Minnesota Orchestra (more on that shortly!).

As we reported earlier, Anna Waldron was awarded Third Prize in the “Rising Stars” as she rendered deeply warm and captivating performances in both the Prelims and Finals.  The audience’s response to Anna’s playing was – in return – equally warm and deeply appreciative.

Noah Chojnacki had a wonderful month as he followed up his Honorable Mention in the “Rising Stars” with reaching the finals of the Young Peoples’ Symphony Concert Association (YPSCA) of the Minnesota Orchestra.  Noah presented a gorgeous performance of MacDowell’s Second Concerto at Orchestra Hall.  His performance was wonderfully organic, had great forward flow, and contained exquisite artistic detail.  His tone was powerful, colorful, yet unfettered, as he filled the vastness of Orchestra Hall with sound.

Our huge month of January continued with a good showing in the Mozart Concerto Competition as Christina Waldron and Nita Qiu both received Honorable Mention.

Lucas Jones rounded out our events with a great performance at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  Lucas represented our State of Minnesota in the National Regional Competition of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) – one of the largest and most prestigious competitions in the nation.  Although Lucas did not come away with any of the top awards – this time!! – he represented our state with class and highest artistic values.

We turn now to the big spring events of the Thursday Musical and Schubert Club Competitions in March, and our much anticipated Spring Celebration Recitals at Sundin Music Hall in April.  The brochures for our Young Artist World Piano Festival should be arriving this week and we will begin to make plans for the pinnacle event of our artistic year!

 

Yours in Music!!

Joe & Jo Anne

Intense Fall Yields Fruitful Results at CHS!

Jo Anne, myself, and our magnificent students have come off one of our busiest and most intense falls in years.  We attribute this to the expressive power and preparation of our Roster across the board.

Austin Frohmader has continued his torrential flood of accomplishments.  As most of you know, Austin is a very gifted composer as well as pianist.  He is intensely pursuing his dream of entering music school in the fall as a Composition Major, with a heavy concentration in piano as his chosen instrument (of course!).  Two startling events have occurred in support of his composition.

 

First of all, Austin was selected – through the submission of scores – to The Schubert Club Composer Mentorship Program. He is one of just four young composers in the upper mid-west selected for this prestigious program.  He will be mentoring with Composer-in-Residence, Edie Hill.  This program will include studies in Theory, Instrumentation, Orchestration, and Roundtables on the artist’s life as a composer in the modern world.  In the spring, at the conclusion of the Mentorship Program, Austin’s work for Brass Quintet will be performed by the Copper Street Brass at Landmark Center.  Secondly, Austin was the First Place winner of the State Division of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) National Composition Competition, He will represent the State of Minnesota at the West-Central Division Competition in January, University of Colorado, Boulder, in the Senior Division (15-18).  Amazingly, Austin also received Honorable Mention in the same MTNA National Competition in Piano, State Division!  The event was held at St. Olaf College on October 29th.  In addition, he was selected for the Master Class of world-renowned pianist, Christopher O’Riley, October 21^st, at the Burnsville Center for the Performing Arts, (see photo). To round out his amazing fall, he gave a powerfully expressive performance of Prokofiev’s Third Sonata, as guest artist, on Thursday Musical’s Morning Concert Series, November 3rd, Antonello Hall, MacPhail Center for the Arts.

In addition to Austin’s Honorable Mention at the MTNA Young Artist Competition, Lucas Jones was named Alternate to the state winner in the same competition.  He will be called upon to represent the Senior Division in Piano (15-18), in Colorado, should the winner be unable to fulfill his award.  In the Junior Division (11-14), Michael Tang and Noah Chojnacki each received Honorable Mention.  It is very significant that our four young men – Austin, Lucas, Michael, and Noah – were half of the eight players to audition in the MTNA Young Artist Competition.  The numbers are extremely limited because of the huge repertoire demands of this competition.  All four of our boys presented the twenty-five to thirty minute solo programs and, in addition, had prepared a twelve to sixteen minute concerto movement(s) for the St. Paul Piano Teachers (SPPTA) Concerto Competition the following week.  All four young men performed their entire thirty-five to forty-five minute programs on our Fall Festival Recitals, October 23^rd. We are very proud of their impressive work ethic.

Lucas Jones, Michael Tang, Daniel Qu, and Noah Qiu were named finalists in the St. Paul Piano Teachers (SPPTA) Concerto Competition (November 5^th).  They were four of the seven finalists chosen, and our studio contributed nine of the twenty-one contestants in the event.  Our other performers were Noah Chojnacki, Matthew Qu, Nita Qiu, Stephanie Ye, and Ellie Krienke. Jo Anne and I are very gratified to say – and without equivocation – that all nine of our young artists played their very best.

In other news . . . Mandy Chang, Stephanie Li, Niels Wu, Mulan Zhu, and Richard Chang have been elevated to the Young Artist Class.  We expect wonderful contributions from them in the near future to our top class!

Our young artists have a very brief period, before the holidays, to get going on huge amounts of new literature.  January will be another wild month of PCs and competitions – both in and out of town.

 

Yours in Music –

Joe & Jo Anne

Young Artist World Piano Festival 2011

Brochures, Applications, and Competition Rules now available for our Young Artist World Piano Festival.

Jo Anne and I cannot say enough about this great festival that we have been a part of for so many years. This will be the 21^st year of the Festival (formerly the Young Artist Piano Camp).  I have been a member of the artist faculty for 15 of those years, with Jo Anne joining the faculty some 6 years later.

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Our Festival is a magical time and place.  It is a time and place where everyday concerns and distractions dissolve into insignificance.  We eat, breathe, and bathe in the light of our great art.  It is a time and place where devoted artist-faculty “hang” with and mentor their young charges 24/7.  International artists come to teach and perform this great art.  It is a time and place where children and teenagers of like mind, are finally able to share their greatest musical passions and experiences. This time and place does not exist anywhere else in their daily lives.  They soar.  They are not diminished by the unimportant.  It is an oasis in the desert.  It is a time and place where once experienced, one will want to return to again and again.  It is an intense and exuberant life experience.  It will be a part of their souls forever.  It is hard work and joyous in the deep and meaningful way that only hard work and devotion can provide.  Young artists of the piano learn from one another.  They understand one another.  They lift each other up.  This time and place is important.  It is necessary.  All of our students must drink from the well of this oasis.  It is the pinnacle of our year’s musical journey.  It is a time and place to work, to rest, to recreate, to contemplate, to recharge.  It is Piano Paradise and more.  The gods of Classical Music bless us and smile upon us. . .

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Jo Anne and I will shortly have gorgeous printed brochures to hand out to our students and families. In the meantime, to learn more about the festival, please visit the following link: Young Artist World Piano Festival website.

Austin sweeps top awards at Orchestra Hall! Lucas garners the Schmitt Prize.

Yesterday, our sixteen year old Junior, Austin Frohmader, won the coveted First Prize of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Young Peoples’ Symphony Concert Association (YPSCA) Concerto Competition. It is one of the most difficult and prestigious competitions in the nation, and Austin is the first of our many finalists – over the years – to win the top prize.  It has been a long time coming!  It has been a long and gruesome road to the top of this one!  Austin was awarded six performances (with the possibility of 2 more) with the world renowned Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis.  He will be presented in a series of concerts for young people in the 2012 concert season.  He will be performing Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra. As part of the top prize, he received $1,500.00.  Austin also received the prestigious Thelma Hunter Award ($200.00) and the Minneapolis Music Teachers Forum Recital Award ($200).  He will present a solo program for this organization on March 1, of this year.  I believe Austin has amassed at least $2.600.00 in winnings so far this year.  As Jo Anne and I like to joke . . . “Play piano – get check!”

Jo Anne and I had a great time yesterday!  Since teachers are prohibited from accompanying their own students, we were able to just sit in the Hall and enjoy hearing our young men’s performances.  Austin gave an absolutely definitive and compelling performance of the Fantasy. He filled that huge place with layered, kaleidoscopic colors.  The cadenzas were very expansive and sensuous as well as explosive.  It was as if he was sitting on a powder keg of musical dynamite.  The vivace (closing section) is a Hungarian Can-Can of sorts, and he drove it right to the edge, without ever going over – always in control.  It was thrilling fun.  We could tell that he had absolutely captured the audience from the first note to the final octaves.  Jo Anne reported to me that the man behind her said he had “goose bumps” throughout the performance.  This is what it is all about!

Our dearest Lucas Jones, a fifteen year old Freshman, was the youngest performer in the final field of twelve musicians (along with another fifteen year old).  Lucas and Austin were two of just four pianists selected for the finals, as it is for all instruments.  Lucas received the very important Schmitt Prize ($500.00).  Lucas’ Chopin exhibited a deeply musical and artistic poetry.  And, although Lucas’ sound is completely unique and different from Austin’s, he also had the power to fill Orchestra Hall with sound.  This was an incredibly important experience for Lucas.  It will be an important part of the mosaic of his manly, artistic character, and his burgeoning virtuosity.  I received a wonderful note from the President of the Minneapolis Music Teachers Forum effusively praising both boys.  Believe me, Lucas’ development, as a young artist, will be watched closely.  One funny thing: Lucas’ mom, the beautiful, amiable, and intelligent Margaret Jones, was no-where to be found, although Lucas’ dad and sister were sitting right next to us.  Jo Anne and I brought brown paper bags (just kidding) in case of Margaret’s possible hyper-ventilating.  But no one could find her.  We think she was hiding in one of the doorways along the long corridors of the first tier – or perhaps in one of the Ladies restrooms!!  Well, hopefully, next time, Margaret!!

One twinge of wistful regret: that our own beloved teacher and mentor, Martin Marks, could not be there to hear the boys yesterday.  He was our musical father and the greatest influence on our artistic and personal lives.  We were incredibly close to him from the time I was fourteen to when he passed away six years ago.  Jo Anne and I thought of him so much yesterday.  He was a magnificently gifted and powerful artist, almost too sensitive to live.  He had the deepest, most compelling interpretive insight into the great piano literature of anyone I have known.  His too infrequent performances made everyone crazy with awe and excitement.  I think we thought of him so much yesterday, because the boys exemplified, so beautifully, our studio’s philosophy of service to the music first, last, and always.  Mr. Marks always talked to us, from the time we were teenagers until his physical passing, that if we wanted to serve ourselves and others – serve the music first.  Austin and Lucas played without any histrionics of any kind.  They made the event about the music – not about them.  They were there to deliver the body and soul of the music, and deliver it they did!!  He would have been thrilled how the boys played yesterday and would have talked about it for weeks.  Somehow, I know he heard it, as he lives on in Jo Anne and me.

Yours in Music –

Joe & Jo Anne

Reviews of CHS Students at the Mozart Concerto Competition

The Noble and the Beautiful

Six of the youngest members of our Young Artist Class performed this past Saturday in the Mozart Concerto Competition of the Minneapolis Music Teachers Forum. This is a nice “entry level” competition for very young and very gifted students to perform a movement or movements of a Mozart Concerto.  Although the competition is open for students K through 12, we generally send only our youngest players who are deeply involved with Mozart at this stage of their development.  Our teen-agers (as they must) are generally involved with the great, gigantic concertos of the Romantic Period.

All six of our players brought a nobility and beauty to this event that brought tears to our eyes.  They lifted the sublime nature of Mozart much above the event itself.  They performed with a poise and maturity way beyond their years.

Noah Chojnacki, thirteen, (whom we lovingly call Chopinacki) played with his customary integrity of the highest order.  Noah played with an exquisite attention to detail, and an impressive organic sweep.

Daniel Qu, twelve, demonstrated literally phenomenal growth in his technical prowess – especially in the third movement of Mozart’s B-flat Concerto, K. 450.  It is considered to be one of the most difficult and thorny of all the concertos.  In a letter to his father of May 24, 1784, Mozart wrote: “I cannot come to a decision between those two concerto(s) in B-b and D (K. 451).  I consider them both to be concertos and concertos that are bound to make the performer sweat.  From the point of view of difficulty, the Bb concerto beats the one in D”.  (Maurice Hinson)  Daniel worked exceedingly hard on this piece, but if Daniel did any sweating, he did not show it.  He made it seem easy.  This is a great artistic achievement – to not allow the technical difficulties of what one is doing to interfere or deflect from the emotional and artistic content of the work at hand.  Noah and Daniel are now ready to tackle one of the major Romantic concertos.

Matthew Qu, a ten-year-old fourth grader, and Michael Tang, eleven, and in the sixth grade, are very good “piano buddies” and both played brilliantly on Saturday.  They shared a wonderful experience together at our Piano Camp in July of 2009.  As young musicians, they both “speak” with very individual and soulful voices yet they share many highly desirable traits.  They both have brilliant intellectual and emotional command of the works at hand.  They are both developing virtuoso techniques and they play with hair-raising fire and energy.  They have phenomenal memory and have already learned a great deal of literature.  They play with boundless courage and energy.  Jo Anne and I know Michael and Matthew will continue to inspire and encourage each other as they continue to develop their formidable musical and artistic gifts.

Stephanie Ye, our nine-year-old fourth grader, performed her personal best in a piece that is immensely more complicated, lengthy, and sophisticated than the work she performed last year.  Stephanie is experiencing tremendous growth and development.  We had a scary period right before our dress rehearsal for this event.  Stephanie and I mismanaged her practice time as we got involved in new literature.  It is always difficult to juggle the study and preparation of multiple works.  She was not well-prepared for the dress rehearsal.  An alarm went off!  Stephanie had just one more lesson (the next day!) before the competition.  It was Martin Luther King Day, and she “took the bull by the horns” and literally practiced all day.  She came in to her lesson prepared and playing the piece better than before.  This is the definition of “True Grit”.

Our youngest player to perform on Saturday was Nita Qiu, our eight-year-old third grader.  Even at this tender age, Nita shows every sign of becoming an artist of the first rank.  She played her concerto with an amazing depth of understanding and feeling.  And she is developing a major technique to back it up.  She played so beautifully, I had a very hard time concentrating on the orchestra part!  I wanted to just stop and listen.  Her performance was a compelling and captivating experience.

So, one may ask, “If everyone played so great, why didn’t someone win something this time?”  This is a fair question.  But this is the nature of piano competitions.  Decisions are extremely subjective, often fickle, incomprehensible, and sometimes, downright crazy.  But I will have more to say on competitions later.  What I do remember, is the great pianist Jerome Lowenthal telling me – when I was a teen-ager – that the only competition of any importance, is the one with oneself.  In this sense, all of our kids were First Prize Winners.

Yours in Music

Joe & Jo Anne