The 2017 Wisconsin Youth Piano Competitions has kicked off on June 16, 2017 at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music.
International acclaimed piano artist, Jie Chen, performed music by Franz Schubert and Chinese traditional music transcribed for the piano at the opening concert for the music festival “Classics from the East and West” set the stage for young pianists, ages 10-16, participating in the Wisconsin Youth Piano Competition. Jie Chen will be a judge for the final round of the competition.
The opening concert is sponsored by the Organization of Chinese Americans-Wisconsin. The concert-goers were treated with a tea reception featuring amazing array of Western and Eastern appetizers, desserts and to our surprise, a gracious demonstration of traditional Chinese instruments including erhu and Dizi (a Chinese bamboo flute) played by our local Chinese music class teacher, Joel Xue, Pipa by a previous professional Pipa player, Xiaoli Wu who leads a Madison music ensemble, and Ruan (a guitar like Chinese pluk instrument) played by a young man named Joe Anderson from UW-Madison. They played original Chinese music piece of “Autumn Moon over the Calm Lake” among several others, so tranquil and beautiful melody, which is also the piece modified and played by Jie, the featured pianist of the concert. The flavour of the piano play has its uniqueness of transparent expression and more dynamic, a truly magnificent bridging of eastern and western musics together.
Several students from our community made it to the semifinalist, congratulations！The semifinalist and finalist recitals are free and open to the public. Please invite your family and friends to hear them play! All events are held at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, McIntosh Goodrich Mansion, 1584 N. Prospect Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53202
Sunday, June 18 1:00PM: WYPC Semifinalist Recital
Monday, June 19 2:00PM: WYPC Finalists Recital
Photo provided by Geoffrey Xue, Joel Xue and Sharen Chen
