Cedille Records’ Emerging Artist Competition Final Round

Cedille Records, the pioneering, nonprofit Chicago-based classical music label led by President and Founder James Ginsburg, hosts its second Emerging Artist Competition, sponsored by the Zell Family Foundation. This year’s semi-finalists are violinists Esme Arias-Kim and Rabia Brooke; oboist Oliver Talukder; and pianists Boris Krivoshein, Tamila Salimdjanova, Wenting Shi, and Seho Young. A diverse class of incredibly accomplished, early-career musicians with deep ties to Chicago, this group of semi-finalists represent an array of backgrounds and perspectives on classical music with artists hailing originally from China, Uzbekistan, Russia, Boston and, of course, Chicagoland.  These artists will compete in a semi-final round on May 17. Up to four finalists will be selected to compete in the public final round on May 18. The winner will receive a Cedille recording contract for their debut solo album — a prize valued at $70,000.

Designed to augment Cedille’s nonprofit mission of supporting Chicago’s finest classical music artists, the Emerging Artist Competition is open to musicians under the age of 35 who reside in, or are originally from, the Chicago metro area and who have not yet appeared as the featured performer on a commercially released CD. In this year’s competition, 23 first round applications were pared down to seven semi-finalists by a panel of Cedille board members.

The semi-final and final round judges are James Ginsburg; Henry Fogel, former President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association; Jorge Federico Osorio, pianist; Sean Connors, Third Coast Percussion; Lidiya Yankovskaya, former Chicago Opera Theater Music Director; Stacy Garrop, Chicago-based composer; and Oliver Camacho, WFMT-FM Music Director.