Three performers take top prize in U of M Concerto Competition

The University of Manitoba Concerto Competition announced its three winners after a final round performance on the stage at the Desautels Concert Hall last week.  

Out of nine performers, pianist Ari Hooker, violinst Shion Tamashiro, and percussionist Nathan Gibbens came out on top of  a field that was open to all students in U of M’s Desautels Faculty of Music.  

“It’s a fantastic way to really celebrate the incredible work that students are doing,” said Laura Loewen, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of Collaborative Piano in an interview on Morning Light. “It’s like, I would say, one of the highlights of the year.” 

Hooker, an undergraduate piano student, shared the first movement of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto in the competition. To meet the demands of both the competition and one of the  most famous pieces in the repertoire, Hooker steeped himself in technical preparation.  

“I actually played the third movement in my first year,” Hooker shares, “so I was sort of coming back to the piece. It’s always nice for musicians to return to a piece because every time you come back to it, it feels more settled than it did the last time.” 

Tamashiro, a first-year violinist, also shared a titan of the classical music canon: the first movement of Jean Sibelius’ violin concerto. Her performance captured the top prize for its adventurous take on a piece that has been performed and recorded countless times over the years. 

“I have a habit of questioning why people do certain things and not just automatically adopting certain practices just because it’s tradition,” she smiles. 

“I think that’s a pertinent step in growing as a musician and to actually know what it’s like. You don’t really, truly understand something until you question it, and that’s when you start to truly start to discover the beauty of the music and what Sibelius had in mind when he first composed it.” 

Like Hooker, a big part of Tamashiro’s growth during the concerto competition journey was recognizing the need for good preparation practice. “I struggle sometimes with preparation in terms of time management and all that,” she explains, highlighting the lack of experience she’s had in her young university career.  

“It’s a good goal to have,” Hooker agrees. “It keeps you disciplined as a musician to have these things that occur periodically to work towards.”