Winners of the 2017 Vancouver International Music Competition

Platinum Winners ($1500 Scholarships): 

Lukasz Mikolajczyk	Piano – Artists Category	Poland
Takumi Taguchi	Strings – Young Artists Category (Violin)	USA/Japan
Geoffrey Schellenberg	Voice – Artists Category (Baritone)	Canada

Lukas Mikolajczyk – Piano

Lukas Mikolajczyk is standing out as one of the most recognized pianists of his generation in Poland. He has been distinguished as a pianist of great sophistication. He is praised particularly for his harmonic perception, beauty of sound and passionate performances. In 2014 he was the very first to receive the Krystian Zimerman Award for most talented young pianists. In October 2015 Lukas Mikolajczyk advanced to the second round of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland. This achievement placed him among the world’s top 30 best young pianists. In October 2017 Lukas Mikolajczyk won the Vancouver International Music Competition held to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. He received Platinum Cash Prize and numerous additional prizes.

Originally from Poland, Lukas Mikolajczyk studied in Katowice at the Karol Szymanowski State Music School in the piano class of Professor Anna Górecka. His progress was accelerated by studies at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, where in 2017 he graduated master’s degree with Professor Zbigniew Raubo. Currently Lukas Mikolajczyk is mentored by Professor Lee Kum Sing at the Vancouver Academy of Music.
At the start of Lukas Mikolajczyk’s career, he has received numerous awards on many significant piano competitions. In 2008, he won the First Prize and the Special Award of Elżbieta Stefańska for the best performance of a Johann Sebastian Bach work at the 10th Ludwik Stefański and Halina Czerny-Stefańska Piano Competition in Płock, Poland. Two years later he received Second Price in the 16th Polish Piano Competition in Konin, Poland and he was awarded the third prize at the International Podkarpacki Chopin Competition held in Rzeszów, Poland. Lukas Mikolajczyk achieved 3rd place (2013, 2015) in the National Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland.

Lukas Mikolajczyk is a scholar of Krystian Zimerman as well as Kler Foundation. He has been awarded many scholarships, such as those sponsored by the Mayor of Katowice, the Marshal of Silesian Province and the Polish Prime Minister.

In November 2013 Kler Foundation released Lukas Mikolajczyk’s first recording which features Fryderyk Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor op. 21. This album commemorated the 40thestablishment anniversary of the Kler Company. Succeeding album, recorded live at the Witold Lutoslawski Concert Studio S1 in Warsaw, Poland, contains unique live performance of Fryderyk Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto. In August 2015, Lukas Mikolajczyk recorded his third album which features Fryderyk Chopin piano works.

Takumi Taguchi – Violin

Takumi Taguchi (USA/Japan), a junior at Shorewood High School in Shoreline, Washington, is a student of Simon James, Assistant Concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony, and piano collaborator Hiro David, having previously studied with Mihoko Hirata of the Suzuki Method. He was born in Durham, North Carolina, and started taking violin lessons at the age of 2 with the Suzuki Method in Tokyo, Japan. Takumi has won several competitions including the 2017 Vancouver International Music Competition Strings Division, the 2017 and 2015 Seattle Young Artists Music Festival Concerto Competition, the 2017 and 2014 Eastside Symphony Young Artists Award, the 2016 Classical KING FM / Seattle Chamber Music Society Young Artists Award, 2016 Seattle Symphony Young Artist Award, 2013 David Tonkonogui Memorial Award by Music of Remembrance, 2013 Suzuki World Convention Concerto Competition in Matsumoto, Japan, among others. Additionally, he was a semifinalist at the 2016 Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in London, UK. An avid chamber musician, his string quartet “Pike Street Quartet” won the Prize for the Best Performance of a Haydn Quartet and Bronze Medals at the 2015 Saint Paul String Quartet Competition in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Takumi was selected as a student artist for the 2015 and 2017 Starling-DeLay Violin Symposium at the Juilliard School, Takumi was a member of the Bellevue Youth Symphony Orchestra for seven years since he was six years old and has also played in the Academy Chamber Orchestra in Seattle, Washington. He has been a regular performer on the Music of Remembrance concerts at Benaroya Recital Hall both as a soloist and chamber musician often collaborating with members of the Seattle Symphony. He has also performed with various orchestras including the Seattle Symphony, Coeur d’Alene Symphony, Cascade Symphony, Philharmonia Northwest, Rain City Symphony, Eastside Symphony, Academy Chamber Orchestra, Bellevue Youth Symphony Orchestra, Suzuki World Convention Special Orchestra. Takumi has played in masterclasses for world-renowned performers and pedagogues, including Aaron Rosand, James Ehnes, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Donald Weilerstein, Paul Kantor, Steven Shipps, Robert McDuffie, Martin Chalifour, Ronald Patterson, Ray Chen, Danielle Belen, Bion Tsang, Adam Neiman, Brian Lewis, Gerardo Ribeiro, Ronald Copes, Giora Schmidt, Frank Almond, James Stern, Mimi Zweig, David Gillham, Koji Toyoda, Kenji Kobayashi, and several others. In recent summers, he has attended music camps including the Meadowmount School of Music and the Summit Music Festival on merit scholarships, to study with Gerardo Ribeiro and Aaron Rosand, respectively. Outside of music, Takumi loves Japanese calligraphy, chess, and reading. He also enjoys math and science at school.

Geoffrey Schellenberg – Baritone

Minnesota native Geoffrey Schellenberg joins the Calgary Opera Emerging Artist Program for the 2017-18 season. Praised for his “clarion tone” (Musical Toronto) and “impressive vocal colour” (Opera Canada), recent engagements include Belcore in L’elisir d’amore for Music Academy of the West’s 70th anniversary season under the baton of Speranza Scappucci and directed by James Darrah, as well as Marcello in La boheme with White Rock Concerts in Vancouver. Geoffrey appears on the mainstage of Calgary Opera this season in the the roles of Sergeant in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Captain in Eugene Onegin, and Sciarrone in Tosca. He reprises the role of Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia with Bard on the Beach in September, and makes his debut at the Mamdani Opera Center for a special holiday concert in December. Geoffrey has become a frequent performer around Vancouver, B.C. He regularly performs in Burnaby Lyric Opera productions and has sung Peter in their concert staging of Hansel and Gretel and Sharpless in their mainstage production of Madama Butterfly. He has also been seen with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra playing the Captain in a concert performance of Candide and Danilo in selections from The Merry Widow in their The Look of Love concert. Additionally, he has sung as a soloist in several oratorio performances, including the Fauré Requiem with Vancouver Bach Choir and Duruflé Requiem with St. Philips Choir.

Most recently, he performed the baritone roles in a number of original opera scenes for Vancouver Opera Festival’s New Works Project. Geoffrey was a prize winner in the 2016 Canadian Opera Company Centre Stage Competition and was a winner of the 2015 Western Canada District in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He completed his Masters in Opera Performance in 2017 at the University of British Columbia and performed many roles during his studies: Eugene Onegin in Eugene Onegin, Lescaut in Manon, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro. Geoffrey has also participated in multiple productions overseas, playing Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte with Centre for Opera Studies in Italy in Sulmona, Italy, Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro with Accademia Europea dell’Opera in Lucca, Italy, and Papageno in Die Zauberflöte with the European Music Academy in Teplice, Czech Republic. He is a student of baritone Peter Barcza.

1st Place Winners ($600 Scholarships):

Charlotte Wong	Piano – Young Artists Category	USA
Tiffany Yeung	Strings – Young Artists Category (Violin)	Canada
Yeeun Lee	Voice – Artists Category (Mezzo-Soprano)	South Korea

Charlotte Wong – Piano

Charlotte is 15 years old and she is a sophomore at Aragon High School in San Mateo, USA. In the fall of 2015, Charlotte was admitted to San Francisco Conservatory of Music as a scholarship pre-college student and was under the tutelage of Pianist Corey McVicar. Charlotte started learning piano when she was five. She made her orchestral concert debut at the age of nine by playing Haydn Concerto in D Major with the Holy Names University Orchestra. In 2014, she took part in the US Open Music Competition (USOMC) and was awarded the first place in the Open Solo. Next year in 2015, she won second place in both USOMC Open Piano Concerto (Advanced) and USOMC Showcase Piano. At the same year, she was the first place winner of the Music Teacher Association of California Piano Concerto Competition. In 2016, she was awarded major prizes in a number of international competitions, including third place in San Jose International Piano Competition along with the Best Bay Area Contestant, second place in the Los Angeles Young Musician International Competition, and second place in the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition together with the Best Performance of Paganini Etude. In the same year, she also played in the American Liszt Society Young Pianists Play Liszt Concert. Charlotte is keen on enriching her musical experience. In 2014 summer, Charlotte applied for the Colburn Music Academy Piano Festival and there were over 30 young pianists from all over the world participating in the event. At the Festival, she won second place in a Sonata Competition. She is also devoted to community outreach to share her music with others. In 2016, Charlotte performed at the Steinway Young Artist In-home Piano Recital which was a benefit concert to raise money to support the less-fortunate students who need more music in their lives. She is also a member of the California Young Musicians which aims at promoting classical music to the neighborhood. Charlotte enjoys her school life and she is the founder and president of the Calligraphy Club. She also takes leadership class in school and has the chances in organizing events and coordinating schoolmates.

Tiffany Yeung – Violin

Tiffany Yeung, age 14, is a full scholarship student of Dr. Conrad Chow in the Phil and Eli Taylor Performance Academy at the Royal Conservatory of Music. Having studied the violin since the age of 4, she has appeared as a soloist in renowned halls; Steinway Hall, New York, Roy Thomson Hall, Koerner Hall, and the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

Most recently, Tiffany was the winner of the 2017 Remember Enescu International Violin
Competition held in Sinaia, Romania and was the 1st cash prize winner at the 2017 Vancouver International Music Competition. For 3 consecutive years, she was the first prize winner at the Canadian Music Competition, as well as the grand prize winner in 2011 & 2012. Tiffany has performed with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Sinfonietta, Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra, Oakville Chamber Orchestra, Cambridge Symphony Orchestra, and the CAST Youth Orchestra and is looking forward to future engagements with the Oakville Chamber Orchestra, Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra, and the Summit Music Festival Orchestra. Currently in her third season with the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, Tiffany was named co-concertmaster for the 17/18 season and was the winner of the 2015 TSYO Concerto Competition. Tiffany has performed in masterclasses with distinguished artists; Aaron Rosand, Miriam Fried, Eduard Schmieder, Kazuhiro Takagi, David Radzynski, Mayumi Seiler, and Jonathan Crow and has attended the NAC Young Artists Program and Summit Music Festival, where she was a winner of the 2017 Mary Smart Concerto Competition.

2nd Place Winners ($300 Scholarships):

Stephen Nguyen	Piano – Artists Category	Canada
Robert Choi	Strings – Young Artists Category (Cello)	Canada
Amy Moodie	Voice – Artists Category (Soprano)	Canada

Amy Moodie – Soprano

Amy Moodie, soprano, is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Richard Bradshaw Fellowship in Voice and Opera (2016-2018) at the University of Toronto where she has recently completed her first year of graduate studies in Classical Vocal Pedagogy. This fall, Ms. Moodie was thrilled to have been chosen as the Vocal Category Second Place Cash Prize Winner and as the Winner of the Best Overall Performance of a Canadian Composition prize at the Vancouver International Music Competition. Most recently, Ms. Moodie performed with the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Women’s Choruses to perform Imant Raminsh’s Missa Brevis in C Minor under the baton of Dr. Hilary Apfelstadt. The 2016-2017 season saw Ms. Moodie in recital in Toronto and Barrie, performing a mix of standard classical repertoire and favourite pieces from musical comedies. This past spring, Ms. Moodie premiered “Side Road Swamp” by Canadian composer, Francis Ubertelli as part of the Sounds of Silence project at the University of Toronto and in December was featured as the soprano soloist in Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise with the Oakville Choral Society. In June, Ms. Moodie participated in the National Association of Teachers of Singing Intern Program where she was mentored by master teacher, Stephen Smith. As an active performer in both opera and musical theatre, Ms. Moodie has recently been seen in Isis and Osiris (World Premiere), Falstaff and Price Igor (Opera In Concert), as Voluptua in La Pizza con Funghi (Yorkshire Opera Workshop), and as Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance (VAOP). Other credits include Millie in Thoroughly Modern Mille (CMTP Toronto), Sister Robert Ann in Nunsense! (Orillia Stage Company) and as Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music (Halifax Summer Opera Festival). Ms. Moodie has been engaged as a soloist at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre with Symphony on the Bay and KooGle Theatre, with the King Edward Choir of Barrie and with the Oakville Choral Society. She is the soprano soloist and section lead at Kingsway Lambton United Church. Ms. Moodie holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Classical Voice Performance from the University of Toronto where she continues to study with renowned coloratura soprano, Lorna MacDonald. She has completed theatrical certificates at the Stella Adler Studio and Circle in the Square Theatre School both in New http://www.amymoodie.com York City. Ms. Moodie has also completed teacher training of Somatic Voicework™, created by master teacher, Jeanette Lovetri.

Best Overall Performance of a Canadian Composition ($150 Scholarship):

Amy Moodie

Voice – Artists Category (Soprano)

Canada

Outstanding Performance of a Canadian Composition ($100 Scholarship):

Rafael Brisebois

Strings – Junior Talent Category (Violin)

Canada

Gold Prizes:

Eunhwa Lee	Piano – Artists Category	South Korea
Marin Chiba	Piano – Young Artists Category	Japan
Felipe Jiang	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Argentina

Jacob Clewell	Strings – Artists Category	USA
Griffin Linklater	Strings – Young Artists Category	Canada
Rafael Brisebois	Strings – Junior Talent Category	Canada

Brianna DeSantis	Voice – Artists Category	Canada
Meiling Ji	Voice – Junior Talent Category	China

Silver Prizes:

Jui-Sheng Li	Piano – Artists Category	Taiwan
Nicole Linaksita	Piano – Artists Category	Canada
Hyejin Pak	Piano – Artists Category	South Korea
William Lin	Piano – Young Artists Category	China
Sue Wang	Piano – Young Artists Category	Canada
Michelle Jia Yun Xu	Piano – Young Artists Category	Canada
Matthieu Foresi	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Canada
Paul Wang	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Canada
Sarah Yang	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Canada

Luis Angel Medina	Strings – Artists Category	Canada
Sophie Baird-Daniel	Strings – Artists Category	USA
James Butler	Strings – Young Artists Category	USA
Davin Mar	Strings – Junior Talent Category	Canada
Victoria Wong	Strings – Junior Talent Category	Canada

Tamra Jones	Voice – Artists Category	USA
Jason Klippenstein	Voice – Artists Category	Canada
Stanford Guo	Voice – Young Artists Category	Canada
Anjulie Djearam	Voice – Junior Talent Category	Canada

Bronze Prizes:

Vivian Chen	Piano – Artists Category	Canada
Renon Chiba	Piano – Artists Category	Japan
Benjamin Hopkins	Piano – Artists Category	USA
Xin Zhang	Piano – Artists Category	China
Yuan Zhuang	Piano – Artists Category	China
Angela Hu	Piano – Young Artists Category	Canada
Jiwei Ruan	Piano – Young Artists Category	Canada
Towa Stewart	Piano – Young Artists Category	Canada
Ranfei Wang	Piano – Young Artists Category	Canada
Yilang Zhou	Piano – Young Artists Category	Canada
Edward Duan	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Canada
Brian Li	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Canada
Austin Ng	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Canada
Joshua Tromans	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Canada
Nina Wang	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Canada

Honoka Shoji	Strings – Young Artists Category	Canada
Renee Hui	Strings – Junior Talent Category	Hong Kong
Eric Tang	Strings – Junior Talent Category	Canada

Diana Agasian	Voice – Artists Category	Canada
Shutong Zhang	Voice – Artists Category	China
Meilin (Mary) Guo	Voice – Junior Talent Category	China

Certificates of Merit for Best Performance of a Canadian Composition:

Nicole Linaksita	Piano – Artists Category	Canada
Annie Cao	Piano – Young Artists Category	China
Paul Wang	Piano – Junior Talent Category	Canada

Jacob Clewell	Strings – Artists Category	USA
Robert Choi	Strings – Young Artists Category	Canada
Davin Mar	Strings – Junior Talent Category	Canada

Stanford Guo	Voice – Young Artists Category	Canada
Meiling Ji	Voice – Junior Talent Category	China

Teachers of Cash Prize Winners:

Lee Kum Sing, Simon James, Peter Barcza, Corey McVicar, Conrad Chow, Dale Throness, Sara Laimon, Joseph Elworthy, Lorna MacDonald, and Antje Neumann

Teachers of Gold Medalists:

Antje Neumann, Sakai Ciharu, Steven Dann, Sophie Roland, Jerrica Santos, Ingrid Henderson, James Tocco, and Hanh Nguyen

Teachers of Silver Medalists:

Awadagin Pratt, Bradley Williams, Daniel Bolshoy, Debra DaVaughn, Donna Fishwick, Corey Hamm, Eugene Skovorodnikov, Jeremy Attanaseo, Joanne Hounsell, Rachel Haisell, Judy Loman, Manti Poon, Nicholas Rada, Peter Barcza, Kyoko Hashimoto, Rada Bukhman, Ronald Morgan, Tanya Shevtsov, Victor Shevtsov, and Yuri Zaidenberg

Teachers of Bronze Medalists:

Bernard Duerksen, Corey Hamm, Craig Sheppard, David Vandereyk, Diane King, Donna Fishwick, Edith Pun, Guang Yang, Irina Voro, Jerri Lee Mercer, Jessica Zhang, Kenneth Broadway, Kikuchi Reiko, Libby Yu, Lydia Wong, Miya Otake, Sergei Saratovsly, Shelley Roberts, Vicky Chen, and Vladimir Viardo