2024 Competition Finalists
Chamber Music in Yellow Springs is proud to announce the two finalists of their 39th Annual Competition for Emerging Ensembles: Hesper String Quartet and Amnis Piano Quartet. Theses ensembles, selected by a panel of professionals, will each perform for one half of the concert on April 28 at the First Presbyterian Church of Yellow Springs.
The competition is one of the signature programs of the all-volunteer non-profit, and is designed to recognize and support new talent. Following the April 28 concert, three judges will choose the winners of the $4,000 first prize and the $3,000 second prize. While they decide, CMYS will conduct a poll for the $500 Audience Favorite Prize.
Hesper String Quartet
The Hesper String Quartet is a Korean-American chamber ensemble that was formed as a student group at the Emerson String Quartet Institute of Stony Brook University in 2022. Since its formation, the quartet maintains an energetic balance of performing works by Beethoven, Schumann, and Haydn, while performing works by living composers such as Joan Tower. Notable achievements include winning first prize at the Fanny Mendelssohn International Competition, the Servaas Competition, and the Ackerman Chamber Competition.
Its members–Sojeong Kim, Ye Jin Yoon, SoHui Yun ,Connor Kim–hold degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, Yale University, Stony Brook University, and Seoul National University. “Hesper” means evening star, and like how each star in the night sky has its own story, the Hesper Quartet strives to tell the fascinating story of each work of music that they play.
Amnis Piano Quartet
The Amnis Piano Quartet was established by its members during graduate studies at Yale School of Music where they collaborated under the tutelage of Ettore Causa. During their first semester of formation, the ensemble was selected to perform in the Yale School of Music’s Vista Chamber Music concert and soon after won the Oneppo Concert Series Chamber Music Competition. They most recently won bronze medal in the 50th Annual Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the largest and longest running chamber competition in the United States. They were also semi-finalists at the 2024 CAG competition and selected as finalists at the recent Coltman Competition. Reflecting the cultural ties of their members, Amnis states that one of their goals is “… to highlight underrepresented pieces, specifically by female composers from Korea and the US.”
The Amnis Piano Quartet is a New Haven-based ensemble comprised of violinist Minkyung Lee, violist Matthew McDowell, cellist Jenny Bahk, and pianist Linda Lee.
Since the first Competition in 1985, we have retained a focus widely recognized to be unique among chamber music competitions. The Competition, as a companion part of a well-established chamber music concert series, intends to foster the development of new chamber music ensembles. Promoting new groups as performing ensembles is an essential part of our goal of sustaining chamber music concert series like ours. Competitors must perform a 30-minute program of their own choosing, an unedited video-recorded performance, and with all the same ensemble members. Recordings made during the last three years are permissible as long as the video recordings were made with the current ensemble members. Finalists often remark that they greatly appreciate being able to perform music they select rather than being judged on comparative performances of standard repertoire. In this way, we believe we are able to hear our Finalists at their best. Seeking to recognize the best new ensembles with a likelihood of having careers as professionals, our Competition has featured ensembles of differing instrumentation in the majority of our 35 competitions. This approach has proven to be successful with over 50% of our Finalist ensembles still performing today. We look forward to receiving your entry materials and to selecting this year’s Competition Finalists.
For questions regarding the competition, please contact the competition chair, Linda Menz, lindamenz@gmail.com.
To keep up with the latest information, follow us on our competition Facebook page
First Prize – $4,000
Second Prize – $3,000
People’s Choice Award – $500