The Schubert Club of St. Paul held its annual auditions for their Student Scholarship Awards this spring. The competition includes categories for voice, winds, strings, piano and organ and awards cash prizes of $1500 - $2000 to music students from 7th grade to post graduate.
The competition is named in memory of Bruce P. Carlson who was the former executive director of the Schubert Club from 1968 - 2006.
The Final Round winners will be featured in a recital Friday, April 29th at Sundin Hall at Hamline University in St. Paul, and it's been our tradition at Classical MPR to have some of those winning performers come to the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Music Studio at MPR headquarters to chat with our hosts.
Soprano Allison Schardin of St. Paul is no stranger to MPR listeners. She has sung locally with the University Of Minnesota Opera Theater and Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Minnesota Opera and several other regional performing groups. She is the winner of the Schubert Club's 1st Prize in Graduate Voice and she and her husband are expecting their first child in June.
Sedra Bistodeau of Princeton, Minnesota is a high school sophomore and has been playing violin since she was three years old. Besides being an award-winning member of the St. Cloud Symphony, she has also won numerous fiddling awards and has performed on A Prairie Home Companion, the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand and has recorded and performed with Red House Recording Artist Peter Ostroushko. The Schubert Club chose her for 2nd Prize in Senior High School Strings category.
Chris Leslie of Cincinnati, Ohio plays the euphonium and is studying music education at St. Olaf College in Northfield. He won 1st Prize in the College/Graduate brass and woodwind category. He was one of two euphonium players in the 2009 International Youth Wind Ensemble and recently took first place in the Thursday Musical Young Artists Competition. He is also a member of several St. Olaf music ensembles and is student teaching at Rosemount High School and Middle School.
15-year-old Pianist Andy Xue of Wayzata High School wowed MPR listeners recently as one of the Showcase Winners in Classical MPR's Minnesota Varsity competition. This spring he is the Schubert Club's 1st Prize winner for Junior High School Piano, and has also won awards at the MMTA Mozart Concerto Competition and has performed with the Kenwood Symphony Orchestra at that the Minnesota Orchestra's Young People's Concert Series.
8th Grader Henry Johnston is a classical guitarist and is the Schubert Club's 1st Place Winner in the Guitar category. He is also one of this year's Showcase Winners in the Minnesota Varsity competition. He studies guitar with is father Alan Johnston at MacPhail and is a member of the MacPhail Guitar Quartet which contains two other former Schubert Club scholarship winners.
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