Much of my win­ter break (and count­less hours in the pre­ced­ing year) were devot­ed to the 2012 Meg Quigley Vival­di Com­pe­ti­tion and Sym­po­sium, which I co-host­ed with my friend and col­league Nico­lasa Kuster, of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pacif­ic Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music. The Com­pe­ti­tion is for young women bas­soon­ists from the Amer­i­c­as (North, Cen­tral, and South), and was found­ed in 2004 by Nico­lasa Kuster (then of Wichi­ta State Uni­ver­si­ty) and Kristin Wolfe Jensen of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin. The Com­pe­ti­tion takes place every two years, and has pre­vi­ous­ly been held at UT-Austin (2005), Itha­ca Col­lege (2007), and the Ober­lin Con­ser­va­to­ry (2010).

This year, we host­ed the com­pe­ti­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pacif­ic. From the ini­tial pool of record­ed entries, our Pre­lim­i­nary Round judges nar­rowed the field to ten Semi-Final­ists. These ten young women trav­eled to North­ern Cal­i­for­nia for live Semi-Final and Final Rounds of com­pe­ti­tion. All ten are very tal­ent­ed play­ers, and the com­pe­ti­tion was fierce. I’m glad that judg­ing was not among my respon­si­bil­i­ties! For the Semi-Final Round, each com­peti­tor per­formed the third move­ment of Anto­nio Vivaldi’s Con­cer­to in d minor, RV 481, and Mar­gi Griebling-Haigh’s Sor­tilège, a piece that Bar­rick Stees com­mis­sioned specif­i­cal­ly for MQVC 2012. Five Final­ists emerged from that round. In the last round of com­pe­ti­tion, each of the five per­formed a work of their choice with piano and the entire Vival­di con­cer­to from mem­o­ry, backed by a string orches­tra con­duct­ed by Stephen Paul­son, Prin­ci­pal Bas­soon­ist of the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny, and Music Direc­tor of Sym­pho­ny Par­nas­sus.

In brief, the results were as follows:

First Place: Anan­ta Kar­ilun Díaz (Venezuela)
Sec­ond Place: Sarah Ruiz (Cos­ta Rica)
Third Place: Alex Zda­nis (Unit­ed States)
Final­ists: Rachel Koeth and Kel­ly Swens­son (both Unit­ed States)
Semi-Final­ists: Julia Bair, Car­ly Gomez, Kara LaM­oure, Danielle Osbun (all Unit­ed States), and Atao Liu (Chi­na)

Con­grat­u­la­tions to them all for won­der­ful per­for­mances! For biogra­phies of the com­peti­tors and oth­er infor­ma­tion about the com­pe­ti­tion, please vis­it mqvc.org.

Next time: all about the three-day Bas­soon Sym­po­sium sur­round­ing the Competition.