Sirena Huang, a 17-year-old violinist from South Windsor, Connecticut, has won the second annual Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, co-presented by the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Orchestra. Huang—who won with her August 19 performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall—received the competition’s $10,000 first prize, a full scholarship to Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the opportunity to perform with orchestras in Shanghai and Beijing, China. Huang, a student of Stephen Clapp and Sylvia Rosenberg at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division, is a 2009 first-place winner of the 2009 International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians and 2008 winner of the Violin Concerto Competition at the Aspen Music Festival. Winners at the Cooper competition also included 17-year-old Alexandra Switala ($6,000, second place prize) and 17-year-old Laura Park ($3,000, third prize). Awards were presented by David H. Stull, dean of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Thomas Cooper, a 1978 Oberlin College graduate who is sponsor of the competition. Established in 2010, the competition alternates annually between piano and violin.
Posted August 30, 2011
