It was so good to meet and greet everybody during the Outstanding Artist Piano Competition in Ellensburg! It was a full three days with 41 students in performance beginning on Saturday, November 9 and ending Monday afternoon, November 11. We had 24 entrants for Junior Division and 21 in Senior Division. These students represented 20 teachers. In addition, we instituted our first year of the BIPOC, Women & Underrepresented Composers aspect of competition! 17 students opted for this category and the judges were so happy and pleased to hear varied and new music. Ten students from the Junior Division and seven students from the Senior Division opted to have one of their repertoire pieces considered for the new prize award. Results can be found here. Huge thank you to Lark Powers for her work with me on this endeavor. We’re off to a strong beginning!
Thank you to Michelle Mielke, Chair of the WSMTA Education Board, Colleen Hunter, WSMTA President and Amanda Harris, WSMTA Vice-President for their encouragement and work. We all thank Preta Laughlin for her time and energy in making sure everybody working competitions was take care of for snacks and lunchtimes. Thank you to Kirsten Carlson, WSMTA Administrative Coordinator, for her help with registrations and communication tasks overall; and to Julie Swienty for being the MTNA/WSMTA Competitions Coordinator and for her communication with the support staff at CWU especially! Thank you also to Jani Stoehr, for extra research with titles, opus numbers and clarifications needed to make the printed program as accurate as possible. Our Printed Program is amazing to read through and can be found on the WSMTA Website too. I owe a debt of gratitude to Samantha Yeung and Kirsten Carlson for their encouragement and publishing the competition results quickly as we moved through the weekend days.
A huge thank you is extended to our 2024 OAPC Judges; Lisa Bergman, Roger McVey, and Yelena Balabanova. It was a pleasure to work with them! Our Fulltime Monitor, Patti Robertson, completed her 3rd year with this position and so, my gratitude is heartfelt as I say, “you made this competition run well!” With Jani Stoehr and Patti Robertson, OAPC years have been amazing to be part of! I have “heard through my grapevine” that the students will continue to see bananas as they check in at the Registration Table in future years!
Cherie Felts, OAPC Chair