ARKADELPHIA, Ark.—Carrie Brown was named the first place winner for the second year in Ouachita Baptist University’s Virginia Queen Piano Competition. Ouachita hosted the 33rd annual competition April 23 in Mabee Fine Arts Center’s McBeth Recital Hall.
Brown, a senior piano performance major from Knoxville, Ark., performed “Sarcasms No.3” by Prokofiev and “Etude Transcendant No.10” by Liszt.
“To me, winning this competition is very important,” Brown said. “Being a performance major, I work hard and look for opportunities to perform, and winning this competition is a display of all the hard work I have put into my piano studies.”
Brown previously won the Virginia Queen competition as a sophomore in 2008. She has also recently earned first place honors at the 2009 National Federation of Music Clubs student/collegiate auditions and the Hot Springs Music Club scholarship auditions.
Brown received a $700 prize with her first place performance. The second place winner was Grant Turner, a senior music major from Fort Worth, Texas. Turner received a $300 prize for his performance of “Intermezzo, Op.116, No.6” by Brahms and “Satanic Apparition, Op. 4, No.4” by Prokofiev. Third place went to Jon Sanders, a sophomore music theory major from Pearcy, Ark. Sanders received a $150 prize for his performance of “Sonata, K.330. 1st movement” by Mozart and “Etude, Op.72, No.4” by Moszkowski.
“The competition is open to all Ouachita piano majors and minors,” said Dr. Lei Cai. OBU assistant professor of music. “Each year we invite a professional pianist with regional or national reputations from outside the university to judge the competition.”
Ouachita alumnus David Glaze served as judge this year. Glaze currently serves as minister of music at Trinity United Methodist Church in Little Rock, Ark., as well as artistic director and conductor of the 60-member River City Men’s Chorus. He has released two CDs, “Christmas…Simply,” a piano album, and “Pedals and Pipes,” an organ album. He holds Bachelor of Music Education and Master of Music Education degrees from Ouachita.
Virginia Queen is a former Ouachita piano professor who taught at the university for more than 40 years. She established the competition and an endowment to fund it in 1977 while teaching at OBU to motivate Ouachita’s piano majors to excel in their field. Contributors to the fund include Queen’s friends and former students as well as Queen herself, who now lives in Little Rock.
