The 2016 Arthur Poister Scholarship Competition in Organ Playing took place April 9 on the Holtkamp organ in Hendricks Chapel, Syracuse University. First Prize went to Colin MacKnight, an MM candidate at Juilliard studying with Paul Jacobs. Colin also holds a BM from Juilliard and will begin the DMA program at Juilliard this fall. He will play his winner’s recital in the fall in Setnor Auditorium (the Crouse Holtkamp, 1950) at Syracuse University.
Second Prize was awarded to Jihye Choi, an MM candidate at Cincinnati, where she studies with Michael Unger. She holds an AB in church music from Seoul Theological University where she studied with Kumock Baik and Jisung Kim. Her “Rising Star” recital will be scheduled in the Malmgren Concert Series at Hendricks Chapel, Syracuse University, in the spring of 2017.
The other finalists were Josiah Hamill, a senior majoring in both violin and organ at the University of Denver, where he studies with Joseph Galema; Jeremy Jelinek, a sophomore at Eastman where he studies with David Higgs; Alexander Meszler, a MM candidate at Kansas in organ and theory where he studied with James Higdon and Michael Bauer; and Jacob Taylor, a DMA candidate at Eastman studying with David Higgs.
The judges for the finals were Michelle Rae Martin-Atwood of the State University of New York at Potsdam; Richard Konzen of Grove City College, Pennsylvania; and Donald S. Sutherland of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, a former student of Arthur Poister at Syracuse.
In the photo (left) are judges Donald Sutherland, Michelle Martin-Atwood and Richard Konzen; and (right) contestants Jeremy Jelinek, Colin MacKnight, Jacob Taylor, Josiah Hamill, Alexander Meszler, and Jihye Choi.
(photo credit: Ben Merchant)
