Young Concert Artists is a New York City-based non-profit organization dedicated to discovering and promoting the careers of talented young classical musicians from all over the world. Founded in 1961 by Susan Wadsworth, the organization holds two competitions annually, one in New York City, United States at the 92nd Street Y and the other in Leipzig, Germany at the Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre. The competition allows artists from all over the world to compete as individuals or in a chamber group, such as a string quartet. The amount of winners varies from year to year as there is no specified limit to the number of participants who can win.
Winners of the competition receive a cash prize and are provided the opportunity to perform in concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.. Winners are also provided with an artistic manager who tries to promote the artist through booking concert engagements both in the United States and abroad and providing publicity materials, promotion, and career development. Many artists in the program's history have also made their debut recordings through the help of the Young Concert Artists program.
Notable past winners include violinists Pinchas Zukerman, Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, and Chee-Yun; pianists Murray Perahia, Emanuel Ax, Richard Goode, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Christopher O'Riley, Ruth Laredo and Olli Mustonen; flutists Paula Robison and Eugenia Zukerman; the Tokyo, St. Lawrence, and Borromeo String Quartets; violist Antoine Tamestit; cellists Ronald Thomas, Fred Sherry and Carter Brey; French hornists Robert Routch and Eric Ruske; trumpeter Stephen Burns; and sopranos Marvis Martin and Dawn Upshaw.
Famous quotes containing the words young, concert and/or artists:
“A young person is a person with nothing to learn
One who already knows that ice does not chill and fire does not burn . . .
It knows it can spend six hours in the sun on its first
day at the beach without ending up a skinless beet,
And it knows it can walk barefoot through the barn
without running a nail in its feet. . . .
Meanwhile psychologists grow rich
Writing that the young are ones’ should not
undermine the self-confidence of which.”
—Ogden Nash (1902–1971)
“Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think.... This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“Few artists can afford artistic temperament.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)