Life > March 6, 2003

By Stephanie Bennett

Arts and Entertainment Editor

The lights dim as a student takes the stage amidst applause and sits, the audience now hushed, to begin what could very well be an award-winning performance.

While Brendle Auditorium was not as full as the LJVM March 1, its audience and participants were just as focused as their athletic counterparts as a total of 26 students competed in the 26th annual Christopher Giles and Lucille S. Harris Competitions in Musical Performance.

The competitions are split into two categories, piano and open, featuring voice students as well as a variety of instruments.

Started with a donation from Paul Sinal, ’67, and his wife in 1977 with a single prize in each category, the competitions have grown sizably since then.

Seven students competed for three prizes in the piano division, playing the music of Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann and Ludwig von Beethoven.

Four awards of $500, $300, $200 and $150 were awarded in the open division of the competition this year.

These awards are funded by alumni and friends of the music department, the fourth of which is new for the 2003 competitions.

Of the seven students competing in the piano division, junior Allison Jones won the Sinal Prize of $500 and senior Benjamin Desiderio took away the $300 Marc and Kirk Elvy Award.

Junior Derek Shore received the $500 Ward Virts Award for Pianistic Expressiveness.

Jones, who entered both segments of the competition, was surprised by her high placement.

Practicing Brahms’ “Rhapsody in E-flat” since October, when the Elvy and Virts winners were announced, “I thought, ‘Well, there it goes!’” she said.

Instead, Jones, who won the second-place Elvy prize last year, walked away with the highest accolade.

“It’s nice to have this opportunity,” she said. “It’s really the only one (competition) that I do ... since there aren’t a lot of other competitions around Winston-Salem.”

First place Sloan Award winner of the 22-person open competition was junior violinist Amy McPeters.

The second place Sloan Mize award went to sophomore Caroline Boyd on the piano, with third and fourth places going to sophomore Sasha Gee Enegren on the bassoon and junior tenor Nicholas Mason.

Current co-director and flute lecturer Kathryn Levy was pleased with this year’s turnout, with “more students that ever before” enrolling in the open division, which usually draws 17 or 18.

The judges were also pleased with the level of student performances.

“I was very impressed with the level of professionalism and the terrific memory work all the students had achieved,” Ashley Barret, the oboe professor at UNC-Greensboro and judge of the open competition, said. “The time flew by, even considering the large number of contestants.”

With such high-quality contestants, “in the end for me, it came down to who was the most confident on stage, really played as musically as possible and ... seemed to enjoy what they were doing up there,” Barret said.

The competitions are named jointly after former music teachers Giles and Harris.

Initial donor Sinal was taught in his undergrad years at the university by Giles, a member of the faculty for 37 years; Harris and Giles worked together on the first fourteen years of the competitions until Giles’ retirement in 1991.

According to Harris, whose name was added to the competitions after her retirement, the awards given, specifically the named ones of the piano division, have “human interest aspects” behind their inspiration, not just musical appreciation.

For example, the Virts family created the Ward Virts award for pianistic expression in 1994 in memory of their now-deceased son, who won first place in the piano competition as a senior in 1985.

In fact, the competitions were begun “to encourage the musical students,” upon the creation of Scales Fine Arts Center in the mid-1970s, Harris said.

A teacher at the university for 34 years, Harris said there was little room for music students when Scales first opened, disappointing students of the department of that time.

The department has certainly rebounded since that time, with the Giles-Harris Competitions in the forefront.

Retired herself, Harris fondly remembers her former colleague, who passed away in 1996. “He knew more about … pianists than anyone I’ve ever met,” she said.

Coming from a career musician who still plays daily, this is high praise.

Harris also continues to be pleased with the caliber of performances at the competitions she helped get off the ground.

According to her, some students “have been really outstanding,” maintaining performances “of a high standard” that speak well of the music department and its students.