Vancouver-born violinist Nikki Chooi, a two-time winner of the Canada Council Musical Instrument Bank competition, is the lone Canadian at the start of semi-finals at the Montreal International Music Competition today.
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The 24-year-old Chooi has spent the last few years polishing his craft at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and now at the Juilliard School. He has already begun a concert career, interspersed with competition entries.
He placed among the runner-up laureates of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium last year.
The prestigious Belgian competition had 12 finalists. The Montreal competition has 12 semi-finalists, which include 16-year-old Stephen Waarts among its four Americans. Besides Canada, France, Poland, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Belgium and Ukraine are each represented by a single semi-finalist, as well.
The two youngest competitors are both 16 — Waarts and Chinese entrant Zeyu Victor Li (who also has a background from both Curtis and Juilliard).
The semi-final programmes get underway tonight at 7:30, at Salle Bourgie, Montreal’s new recital hall, carved out of an old church next door to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Chooi gets the night’s final slot, scheduled for 10:20 p.m.
Chooi, who is in the second year of his second three-year win of the Canada Council’s 1729 Guarneri del Gesù violin, has chosen to perform the G Major Sonata by Maurice Ravel, Poème by Ernest Chausson and, for his contemporary work, a piece by American composer Joan Tower.
The semi-final recitals continue Saturday from 1 to 4:30 p.m. and again from 7:30 to 11 p.m., with an announcement by the jury due at some time after the music has stopped.
CBC Music is promising to make a stream of each competitor’s performance available shortly after they have finished playing. You can check in here.
CBC Radio will present recital-round highlights on May 14 and 15 on Tempo, which airs between 9:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Another set of highlights is set to be broadcast on In Concert, on May 19 starting at 11:30 a.m.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
