Following the final round of the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Piano Competition with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall on Friday evening, the judges announced the first, second, and third-place winners. Prizes were awarded by Thomas and Evon Cooper.
First prize of $20,000 went to Tony Yun, (left, 17) of Toronto, Canada, who played Tchaikovsky’s first concerto. Kai-Min Chang (17) of Changhua County, Taiwan, took home the second prize of $10,000, and Yunchan Lim (14) of Siheung-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea was awarded the third prize of $5,000. Chang and Lim had played Chopin’s first and second concertos with the Orchestra.
Earlier, Yun and Lim had tied for the Audience Award following the Recital Round at Oberlin, which gave each of them an additional prize of $500. All three winners also received full-tuition scholarships to the Oberlin Conservatory.
lawn), the relaxed dress code (an Akron Beacon Journal headline read “Wear what you please”), and the planned broadcast of the program in color on Channel 3 and on WCLV-FM, all added to the excitement. 
Once the glitter and glitz of opening night and getting the season up on its feet is in the past, Ohio Light Opera settles into the imported, more traditional, part of the season. As it happened, the first four productions were all from the American Lyric Theater. Now we’ll be treated to 
On Wednesday, July 18 at 7:30 pm, The Emerson String Quartet will perform with cellist Jerry Grossman in Ludwig Recital Hall as part of Kent/Blossom Music Festival’s 50th anniversary concert season. I spoke with Philip Setzer, violinist of the Emerson, by telephone and asked about the program and his personal connections with KBMF as an alumnus. The Quartet is this year’s Kulas Guest Artist.
Piano professor Robert Shannon is eagerly waiting to welcome this year’s participants in the Thomas & Evon Cooper Piano Competition to the Oberlin campus later this week. “This year the lineup is stronger than ever,” Shannon said in a recent telephone conversation. “There’re some impressive people, and the overall level is consistently high.” 
This year’s sole competitor from Ohio in the Cooper International Piano Competition, fourteen-year-old Kasey Shao began her studies at age six. During a recent telephone conversation from her home in Cincinnati, the Walnut Hills High School sophomore said that she has known about the Cooper Competition from the time it began. “I’ve watched the live streams and broadcasts, and I’ve always wanted to compete in it. Now that I’m finally old enough, I applied and got in. I’m very excited to compete and to meet the other contestants.”