Collegiate division winner Benjamin Gittens is pictured here with Dr. Phillip Thomas, left, and Ning An, right.
photo by Mike Wesson
Benjamin Gittens and Hsin-Hao Yang took first place in the 11th annual Lee University piano competitions for the collegiate and pre-collegiate divisions, respectively. The award ceremony concluded the International Piano Festival and Competition held June 14-20. For the pre-collegiate division, second place was awarded to Eriko Darcy, with third place going to Christopher Richardson.
Finalists were chosen from a field of nine outstanding young pianists, all of whom also participated in the week-long festival. The festival’s 15 participants enjoyed master classes and performances by world renowned pianists Mack McCray, Enrico Elisi, and Grace Fong, as well as faculty artists Ning An and Cahill Smith.
“It was inspiring to watch these talented young pianists flourish as they learned from master teachers,” said Dr. Phillip Thomas, festival chair. “We are already looking forward to 2016.”
Gittens, a piano performance major at the University of Cincinatti’s College-Conservatory of Music, has won numerous competitions and awards including first prize in both the CCM Undergraduate Piano Competition in 2015 and the 2014 Lana M. Bailey Piano Concerto Competition. He won grand prize, first prize, and the Best Romantic Performance at the 2014 Carmel Debut International Piano Competition, and was a concerto competition winner in 2014 at Southern Adventist University.
Yang, 16, is a native of Taiwan and started piano at the age of seven. He has won numerous awards including the first prize of the National Music Competition in 2009 and 2011. Yang participated in the 2011 International Youth Piano Festival in Taiwan as well as the 2013 Interharmony Music Festival in Italy. He gave his first solo recital in 2015 at the Tainan National University of the Arts and the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. He is currently a student of Grace Chung at the National University of the Arts.
Darcy is 13 years old and attends the Catherine Cook School in Illinois. She is the winner of the Chicago Area Steinway Young Artist Competition, first place at the Roberta Savler Piano Competition, and first place at the Chinese Fine Arts Music Festival in Honor of Confucius. In 2010, Darcy won a Gold Medal at the Seattle International Piano Competition. She has performed twice at Carnegie Hall’s Weil Recital Hall. This year, she performed with the Oistrakh Symphony Orchestra as the winner of the 2015 DePaul University Concerto Competition’s Open Piano Division.
Richardson, 17, is from Washington and has been a featured soloist with four different orchestras. He won the 2013 International e-piano competition, Lennox International Young Artists Concerto 2011, and the 2012 and 2014 LA Liszt International Competitions. Richardson was a first prize winner of the 2012 and 2013 International Russian Competitions, and won first prize in the Connecticut International Chopin Competition. He was named a gold medalist for the Chopin Northwest competition in both solo and concerto divisions.
For information on the annual Lee University International Piano Festival and Competition, please contact Lee’s School of Music at 614-8240.
Pictured is pre-collegiate division winner Hsin-Hao Yang with Thomas and An.
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