Examining in Calgary

For the last week I've been examining piano students for RCM Examinations in Calgary. This is an exciting week, as I'm one of the beta testers of RCME's new online marking system. The students will definitely benefit from this new system of marking and adjudicating, as they'll be able to get their exam results mere days after playing their exams. Since the exam results are typed, students will be able to get a better sense of just how they did without having to wade through the examiner's handwriting (which in the case of my own, can be quite a chore). And while it's been a lot of fun working with the new RCME web app, each evening I get home to my hotel room in downtown Calgary and have no desire to do any blogging, since I've already been staring at a computer screen for over six hours.

Next week I'll be back to my regular blogging schedule, but this week it's been interesting to sit back and think about how the blogging process has changed. An article early today by Nick Bilton in the NY Times Bits blog looks at the way content curation has become one of the major blogging (and tweeting!) models of late. I can see that I've definitely moved in this direction over the last while. A quote from Bilton's interview with Maria Popova sums it up:

“I scour it all, hence the serendipity. It’s essentially ‘metacuration’ — curating the backbone, but letting its tentacles move freely. That’s the best formula for content discovery, I find.”

More interesting stuff to come in the next few weeks...

First Round Guide to the 2009 Honens Competition

The Honens International Piano Competition is gearing up its 2009 running that will culminate in the winners being announced in Calgary on November 6, 2009. The Honens Competition bills itself as "one of the highest-ranking musical competitions in the world. Its uniqueness lies in its mission to find the complete artist – one who possess technical mastery as well as expressiveness in a wide range of musical forms and styles – one whose music-making possesses imagination, innovation and relevance in today’s world."

For the competition's first round, over 90 pianists have been chosen for performances in Calgary, New York, and Munich. From the Honens press release of yesterday afternoon, here are the pianists who were invited to compete in the first round:

Calgary, March 21, Rosza Centre

Moye Chen, 26 (China)
Ryan McCullough, 21 (USA)
Sergei Saratovsky, 27 (Canada)
Vasileios Varvareso, 26 (Greece)
Todd Yaniw, 23 (Canada)
Chun-Chieh Yen, 26 (Taiwan)
Zhenya Yesmanovich, 26 (Canada)
Avan Yu, 22 (Canada)
Feng Zhang, 23 (China)
Xixi Zhou, 24 (China)
Adam Zukiewicz, 25 (Poland)

New York, March 26-31, Peter Norton Symphony Space

Audrey Abela, 21 (France)
Yelena Beriyeva, 27 (Georgia)
Michael Berkovsky, 27 (Canada)
Maxim Bernard, 30 (Canada)
Michael Brown, 22 (USA)
Michael Bukhman, 25 (Israel)
Sheng Cai, 22 (Canada)
Sonia Chan, 29 (Canada)
Yunjie Chen, 28 (China)
Sarah Choi, 30 (South Korea)
Vivian Choi, 29 (Australia)
Tina Chong, 24 (Canada)
Yue Chu, 25 (China)
Ran Dank, 27 (Israel)
Gregory DeTurck, 27 (USA)
Christopher Falzone, 24 (USA)
Illya Filshtinskiy, 22 (USA)
Jonathan Floril, 20 (Spain)
Tanya Gabrielian, 26 (USA)
Qing Jiang, 26 (China)
Tanya Karyagina, 30 (Kazakhstan)
Esther Keel, 24 (USA)
Stanislav Khristenko, 25 (Russia)
Sangyoung Khristenko, 25 (South Korea)
Sheng-Yuan Kuan, 27 (Taiwan)
Soyeon Lee, 30 (South Korea)
Dmitri Levkovich, 30 (Canada)
Yoni Levyatov, 29 (Israel)
Ang Li, 24 (Canada)
Scott Meek, 27 (Canada)
Christopher Mi (USA)
Eldon Ng, 29 (Canada)
Adam Nielson, 28 (USA)
Ilya Poletaev, 29 (Canada)
Elizabeth Schumann, 27 (Canada)
Isaac Seo, 24 (Canada)
Benjamin Smith, 28 (Canada)
Konstantun Soukhovetski, 28 (Russia)
David Tong, 26 (Australia)
Gilles Vonsattel, 28 (USA)
Zun Wang, 30 (China)
Wayne Weng, 26 (Canada)
James Willshire, 25 (United Kingdom)
Irene Wong, 27 (Canada)
Di Wu, 25 (China)
Zenan Yu, 22 (China)
Wei-Jen Yuan, 26 (USA)
Darrett Zusko, 24 (Canada)

Munich, April 25-27, Gasteig

SooJin Anjou, 30 (South Korea)
Angelo Arciglione, 27 (Italy)
Tiffany Butt, 30 (Canada)
Jae-Won Cheung, 28 (South Korea)
Emmanuel Despax, 25 (France)
Martina Filjak, 30 (Croatia)
Mei Yi Foo, 29 (Malaysia)
Lilit Grigoryan, 24 (Armenia)
Sofya Gulyak, 29 (Russia)
Andreas Hering, 26 (Germany)
Alexander Karpeyev, 26 (Russia)
Elena Kolesnitschenko, 27 (Ukraine)
Kiril Kozlovsky, 28 (Finland)
Nataliya Kudrytska, 26 (Ukraine)
István Lajkó, 27 (Hungary)
Tatiana Larionova, 29 (Russia)
Alexey Lebedev, 29 (Russia)
Jinsang Lee, 28 (South Korea)
Ka-ling Colleen Lee, 29 (Hong Kong)
Michael Namirovsky, 28 (Israel)
Vikingur Olafsson, 25 (Iceland)
Esther Park, 25 (USA)
Tom Poster, 28 (United Kingdom)
Mikhail Shilyaev, 30 (Russia)
Evgeny Starodubstev, 27 (Russia)
Julian Steinbach, 30 (Brazil)
Jean-Philippe Sylvestre, 27 (Canada)
Alessandro Taverna, 26 (Italy)
Georgy Tchaidze, 21 (Russia)
Tatiana Titova, 29 (Russia)
Daniel Wnukowski, 28 (Canada)
Kirill Zwegintsov, 25 (Ukraine)

From the first round, 21 pianists will advance to the quarter-finals on October 22-28, consisting of a solo program (featuring a commissioned work by Brian Current) and a short program with violinist and RCM faculty member Erika Raum. The 12 pianists advancing to the semi-finals on October 30-November 1 will perform a solo recital and short program with contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux.

The final round will feature 5 pianists on November 5 and 6 performing concertos with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, after which the winners will be announced. The Honens website has a complete list of the 2009 awards, as well as a list of previous winners.

Best of luck to all the pianists performing over the coming months!