7th Annual UAH UAH Piano Competitions & Festival Winners' Performance Showcase
JUNIOR
Junior - 1st place, Reena Chen
Junior - 2nd place, Sophia Johnson
Junior - 3rd place, Richard Chen
Junior - Merit Award, John Baron Schott
SENIOR
Senior - 1st place, Michael Smiley
Senior - 2nd place, Savannah Howard
Senior - 3rd place, Shannon Boutwell
Senior - Merit Award, Harrison Jones
Senior - Honorable Mention, Claiborne Davis
Congratulations to all the teachers and students for their outstanding achievements as shown in their virtual performances this year at the Competitions & Festival. Thank you all for your continuous support and participation. We look forward to seeing you next year at the annual event.
Guest Artist & Judge of the 7th UAH Piano Competitions & Festival- Dr. Michael Krikorian
Dr. Michael Krikorian is a Los Angeles based pianist, composer, and music educator. He has won top prizes in numerous competitions and given acclaimed performances across the United States as well as Italy, France, China, and South Korea. Some recent performance highlights include recitals at the Conservatoire de Lyon in France, and the Shanghai Oriental Art Center in China. The Munro Review included his sold out concert in the Philip Lorenz International Keyboard Concerts series as one of the top 20 cultural events of 2019 in the San Joaquin Central Valley. In 2018, he was a top prizewinner in the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, including the prize for "best performance of an opera transcription or paraphrase". He completed his doctoral studies in piano performance with additional minor fields in theory, composition, and scoring for visual media at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music as a student of Antoinette Perry. Previously, he earned his M.M. from Manhattan School of Music in the studio of Arkady Aronov, and his B.A. from CSU Fresno as a student of Andreas Werz.
Dr. Krikorian maintains a large studio of private students and serves on the piano faculty of the South Pasadena Music Center and Conservatory. During his studies at USC Thornton he also taught group and private piano as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. In 2017, he was honored with the Award for Excellence in Teaching for Graduate Keyboard Studies Teaching Assistants. Dr. Krikorian is an active member of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), serving as the chair of the Young Professional Leadership Network (YPLN), and as the South Regional Chair for the California Association of Professional Music Teachers (CAPMT) Concerto Competition. He has been invited to present at the MTNA national conference, the CAPMT State Conference, and the MTNA Collegiate Chapters Piano Pedagogy Symposium.
In addition to performing and teaching, Dr. Krikorian composes music for the concert stage and visual media. His most recent project was a score for The Fidelio Incident, a video game loosely based on Beethoven's opera Fidelio.
For more information, please contact Dr. Melody Ng at keyboard@uah.edu.
