April 2025 | Rising Stars Showcase

One of the great highlights of every season is meeting and hearing the winners and runners-up from our annual Young Artists Competition in two Spring concerts. These are the finest and most talented young musicians from Kitsap county. Those who have mastered works with orchestra will appear on our May 10th Bremerton WestSound Symphony concert. Those who have mastered piano sonatas and solo works will perform in our Rising Stars concert at 3:00 p.m. on April 27th at North Point Church in Poulsbo.

Young Artist Competition, Junior Division Winner, Ruth Harvey will perform Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in B-Flat Major, Op 23, No. 2. This is a virtuoso piece and rhythmically quite complex for its time. Listen for a thunderous left-hand ostinato of arpeggios which contrasts with a jagged right-hand melodic line. 

Young Artist Competition Senior Division Winner, Alec Rodriguez brings us Maurice Ravel’s Jeux d'eau. The title literally means Games of Water. In the score there is the following quote,” The River god is laughing at the water that tickles him.” Ravel dedicated this piece to his teacher Gabriel Fauré, who loved this work. Crusty old Camille Saint-Saëns said this new avant-garde piece was simply "cacophony," but luckily, no one listened to him anymore and the work quickly became a hit. Mr. Rodriguez will also tackle Alexander Scriabin’s Sonata #9. This piece is so dark that his friends dubbed it “The Black Mass.” Scriabin took this as a great compliment and had the publisher print this on the title page.

Our runners-up also bring us many lighter, shorter, entertaining pieces. Cyrus Yan will regale us with the Montagues and Capulets from Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet. This is quite simply the greatest ballet ever written. This movement, also known as Knights, features the young men of both households swaggering across the Shakepearean stage with great bravado.   

Lincoln Jenkins brings us a delightful work by Nikolai Kapustin, his Jazz Toccatina. While this piece uses Jazz scales, rhythms, and blues notes, Kapustin insists that he is still a traditional composer composing in classical forms.

Other highlights include Chaz Niles with Chopin’s huge and demanding Barcarolle in F# Major, plus other runners-up with shorter works by Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Khachaturian, Bach, Mozart, and a glimpse of old Mexico with Manuel Ponce’s sun-drenched Intermezzo No. 1.

Mr. Niles will also be featured in Tchaikovsky’s famous Piano Concerto No. 1 on our May 10th orchestra concert. Don’t miss it.

See you on April 27th and May 10th!

Alan Futterman

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