[MASTA] MASTA Chamber Festival

[Peter Tolias]

Congratulations to the Okemos High School String Quartet for their winning performance at the 23rd MASTA Chamber Festival Competition, held on March 6, at Michigan State University. Members of the quartet, shown in the photos below, are Nora Kuo, first violin; Kristin Cimmerer, second violin; Gavin McDowell, viola;  Curtis Kuo, cello.

Adjudicators for the festival were the Toledo String Quartet featuring members Kirk Toth, Jillian Bowers, Valentine Ragusita, and Amy Chang. In addition to adjudicating the competition, the quartet performed, taught, and coached ensembles throughout the day.

Pat Smith, who coaches the Okemos quartet, was clinician for the combined master class attended by all the competing ensembles. Fine points of chamber music performance were addressed during clinic.

The overall quality of the ensembles was very impressive. The Okemos group performed the Beethoven Quartet No.11, Op. 95. The Second place ensemble, the Troy High School String Quartet including members Newton Ni, Whitney Zhou, Ellen Yang, and Amadeus Twu, gave a fine performance of the Mendelssohn Quartet Op. 44, No.1. Several other ensembles competed from throughout the state, making this year's festival among the most competitive in recent times. 

MASTA is very proud of the competition and it's goal of promoting chamber music as a vehicle for developing musicianship in our students. Festival Coordinators Nathan Peters and Melissa Gerber-Knecht are to be congratulated for organizing and running the festival. Their hard work and organization resulted in a wonderful day of music making.

The Okemos quartet will now move on to perform at the Michigan Youth Arts Festival at Western Michigan University in May, and wins an invitation to perform in the Shar Strinq Quartet Competition.

Sponsorship for the festival was provided D'Addario Strings, Marshall Music, Shar Music, and the Baroque Violin Shop.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: photo 1.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 49366 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://astamichigan.org/pipermail/members_astamichigan.org/attachments/20140313/0735934f/attachment.jpe>
-------------- next part --------------





-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: photo 2.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 42811 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://astamichigan.org/pipermail/members_astamichigan.org/attachments/20140313/0735934f/attachment-0001.jpe>
-------------- next part --------------





Sent from my iPad