News: Celebrating Successes

MSU College of Music Announces Honors Concert Competition Winners

Congratulations go to the winners of the College of Music 2008 Honors Concert Competition: students Robert Benton, euphonium; Anton Shelepov, violin; Lisa Perry, soprano; H2 Quartet (saxophonists Jeffrey Loeffert, Geoffrey Deibel, Jonathan Nichol and Kimberly Goddard); Sangmi Lim, piano; and Murray Gross, composer.

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Left to right: Robert Benton, Anton Shelepov, Lisa Perry, Sangmi Lim, Geoffrey Deibel, Jeffrey Loeffert. Not pictured: Jonathan Nichol and Kimberly Goddard.

Photo by Harley Seeley/IMC

MSU Composition Professor Wins American Bandmasters Association/University of Florida Commission

Ricardo Lorenz, associate professor of composition in the MSU College of Music, is the 2008 recipient of the American Bandmasters Association/University of Florida Commission. The award, which was funded by a generous grant from the University of Florida band program, includes a commission honorarium to create a major artistic work for wind band to be premiered in Texas at the ABA Convention in March 2009.  This is the second year this award was granted.

The American Bandmasters Association, founded in 1928, is a service organization that recognizes and encourages outstanding achievement in the field of concert music for winds. The ABA has long championed new works for winds through programs such as the Ostwald Award for Best Original Band Composition, which was the first composition competition for band music in the United States.

MSU Cello Student Wins Two Prestigious Competitions

The new year has been good to MSU cello student Fedor Amosov. The 20-year-old native of Moscow, who studies with Professor Suren Bagratuni, was awarded first prize at the 52nd annual WAMSO Young Artist Competition on January 20, 2008, and first place for strings at the 38th Corpus Christi International Competition for Piano and Strings on February 17, 2008.

Amosov is currently in the performance diploma program at Michigan State University's College of Music.

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Fedor Amosov plays the cello during the finals

of the string competition of the Corpus Christi

International Competition for Piano and Strings, Inc.

in February at the Texas A&M University

Corpus Christi Performing Arts Center.

Photo by Michelle Christenson/Caller-Times

MSU Composition student wins Fulbright Scholarship

Navjot Sandhu, a second year master's student in composition, was awarded a highly competitive Fulbright award to study in India during the 2008-09 academic year. Sandhu, the MSU College of Music's first winner of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship, joins the ranks of approximately 300,000 Fulbrighters since the program's inception more than 60 years ago.

The Fulbright program makes grants for the international educational exchange for scholars, educators, graduate students and professionals. It is considered one of the most prestigious award programs and it operates in 144 countries. The Fulbright Program has 37 Nobel Prize Winners among its alumni, more than any other scholarship program of its kind.

Sandhu will be studying tabla (percussion) performance in the style of Indian Punjab with Pandit Tilak Raj Chandel. He will also research the compositions and life of one of Tilak Raj Chandel's teachers, Ustad Abbas Khan.

To read more faculty and student accomplishments, click here.