Lee’s School Of Music Welcomes Competitors To 11th Annual Piano Festival

Lee University's 11th annual International Piano Festival will feature nine students competing for cash and scholarship awards beginning Thursday.

The competition concludes a week of concerts and professional instruction. Of the festival’s 15 participants, six students will showcase their skills in the pre-college competition: Eriko Darcy, Rita Lee, Parker Payne, Christopher Richardson, Kevin Su and Hsin-Hao Yang. Three students will participate in the college competition: Man-Ling Bai, Benjamin Gittens and Maryna Kysla. 

The official opening of the piano competition for pre-college students will take place Thursday at 10 a.m. in Squires Hall in Lee’s Humanities Center.  At the conclusion of Thursday’s round, pre-college finalists will be selected to perform in the final round on Saturday at 10 a.m. These finalists will perform an entirely new program for this year’s judges – Ning An, Enrico Elisi, Grace Fong, Mack McCray and Cahill Smith. The college competition will take place on Thursday evening at 7:30. 

Prizewinners for both rounds will be named directly following the pre-college final round Saturday. Prizes for the pre-college competition will be $1,500 for first place, $1,000 for second place, and $500 for third place. College competitors are vying for a $1,500 first place prize. 

Eriko 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 Musical Festival in Honor of Confucius. In 2010, Eriko 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. 

Rita is 12-years-old and was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She began to play the piano at age four and gave her first public recital in June 2014. She has won numerous piano competitions in Taiwan. 

Parker is 17-years-old and will be a senior at Central High School in Missouri this fall. Parker won first place at the Beverly Roper Competition, the Springfield Youth Symphony Concerto Competition, and the NSU Competition in Oklahoma, and was the finalist at the Chopin Youth Competition in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He attended the International Institute for Young Musicians at the University of Kansas and the Texas State International Festival. At school, Parker plays percussion and sings in Chamber Choir. He plans to attend a music conservatory in the fall of 2016.   

Christopher, a 17-year-old from Washington, 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. Christopher 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. 

Kevin is a freshman in the Highly Gifted Science/Math/Computer program at Poolesville High School in Maryland. He has performed in Kennedy Center, Alden Theater, DeCaprio Theater, Carnegie Hall, Department of State, and Ehrbar Hall in Vienna, Austria, and he has won many awards including state, regional, and international titles. In addition, Kevin is the founder of the American Music Circle of Youth. He has won competitions in math, science, computer, debate, French and Spanish.  

Hsin-Hao, 16, is a native of Taiwan and started piano at the age of seven. He has won numerous awards including the first prize of National Music Competition in 2009 and 2011. Hsin-Hao 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. 

Ms. Bai, a Lee piano major in An’s studio, was born in Taiwan and began studying piano at the Yamaha Music Center at the age of six. In 2003, she won second place in the 30th Kawai National Piano Contest. The same year, she won first prize in the Kevin Kern Piano Contest. In 2011, she ranked first for piano solo in the Taipei Music Contest.  Ms. Bai performed Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 2” with her school symphony orchestra at the National Music Hall in 2012. Recently, she won the Southern Adventist Concerto Competition and the Lee University Concerto Competition. 

Mr. 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. 

Ms. Kysla, a recent graduate of Bard College Conservatory of Music, earned degrees in piano and Eastern European history and literature. She started to play piano at the age of five in her home country of Ukraine and graduated from Kharkiv Special Music Boarding school in 2010. She has attended numerous music competitions, festivals, and music programs around the world, including Canada, Japan, Germany, Spain, Russia, Belgium, and the United States. 

For more information on the Lee University International Piano Festival and Competition, please contact Lee’s Department of Musicianship Studies at 614-8264, music@leeuniversity.edu or visit http://www.leeuniversity.edu/academics/music/piano-festival/.