17-year-old wins piano competition

Natalia Kazaryan, 17, accompanied here by Jeffrey Brown '04E (DMA), won first prize in Eastman's Young Artists International Piano Competition.

n outstanding performance of Prokofiev's Concerto No. 1 made Natalia Kazaryan, a 17-year-old originally from the Republic of Georgia, the first-place winner in the Eastman School's eighth annual Young Artists International Piano Competition.

As top winner of the weeklong competition for talented 14- to 18-year-old pianists, Kazaryan received a $10,000 annual renewable scholarship to the Eastman School (upon satisfying all admission requirements) and a $4,000 cash award. She also won an award for the best performance in a master class.

This year, 25 competitors from the United States and several foreign countries including China, Russia, Korea, Poland, and Japan took part in the event. The second-place winner was Georgy Chaidze, 16, from Russia, who received a $1,500 cash prize. Sun-A Park, a 16-year-old from Little Ferry, New Jersey, took third prize and $500. Two other competitors won awards as well: Beijing's Yunfeng Cai, 17, for best performance of a classical sonata, and Serbia's Vesna Djokic, 17, for best performance of a work composed after 1930.

The winners of the competition presented a special gala concert in Kilbourn Hall the following evening.

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