Winners have been announced for the fourth Eduardo Mata International Conducting Competition, held in Mexico City from September 22 to 27, with a gala finals concert broadcast live on Mexican television. First prize of $10,000 went jointly to Rebecca Miller, resident conductor of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and a former League of American Orchestras Conducting Fellow; and Lithuanian conductor Vytautas Lukocius. Israeli conductor Yaniv Dinur, currently in his final year of a doctoral program in conducting at the University of Michigan, was awarded a special second prize of $2,000. Co-winners Miller and Lukocius will perform with orchestras in Mexico, South American, and Spain; Dinur will perform with several orchestras in Latin America. The three conductors were chosen from a pool of 103 applicants from 33 countries; sitting on the jury for the competition were Jorma Panula, Gisèle Ben-Dor, and Alun Francis. More information on the competition—sponsored by Instrumenta Oaxaca, the State Government of Oaxaca, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México—is available at http://instrumenta.org/cms/piemdo. The competition is dedicated to the memory of conductor Eduardo Mata, music director of the Dallas Symphony from 1977 to 1993, who died in a plane crash in 1995.
Posted October 14, 2009
