In Michigan, winners of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra’s competition for young performers and composers are being spotlighted at ten concerts this month. The orchestra’s 2008-09 youth concerts, performed from March 2 to 6 before nearly 14,000 area schoolchildren, will include performances of winning compositions by sixth-grader Stephanie Truitt, and Samn Johnson, a high school senior. Stephanie Truitt’s Song: Cedar River Waltz was composed for piano but was arranged for orchestra by the KSO’s Harrison Orr. Johnson’s Symphony No. 1 is the first winning composition in the history of the KSO’s Young Composers in Concert program not to require further orchestration. The concerts also feature performances by competition’s winning instrumentalists: violinists Zachary Brandon (5th grade) and Ariele Macadangdang (12th grade), and pianist Marissa Uchimura (9th grade). The KSO also awarded honorable mentions in performance to high-school seniors Matthew T. Evans (bass trombone), Elizabeth Perry (vocalist), and Abigail Schubkegel (violin). The competition is open to K-12 students from the Michigan counties of Allegan, Barry, Branch, Cass, Calhoun, Kalamazoo, St. Joseph, and Van Buren.
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