Emily Fowler

Third-place winner Emily Fowler ('01, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) began studying at the age of four with violist Faye Huggins, a member of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra who happened to live across the street from her in Calgary. Huggins also happened to have graduated from Oberlin in 1970.

At Oberlin, Fowler studies with Almita and Roland Vamos. Her bachelor of music degree, which she will receive next year, will be in standard violin performance. She also studies secondary Baroque violin with McDonald, and has been admitted into the Master's program beginning this fall, where she will concentrate on the Baroque under McDonald's tutelage. She is a violinist with the Enesco String Quartet.

She says it was "fun to have Obies in the competition. I've never had to deal with that before, but it turned out great--it felt more like a party than a competition."

Fowler says she has been in "innumerable" competitions, and this one notwithstanding, calls them "beasts."

"One never knows what the judging panel is going to look for," she explains, "so the emphasis is really on all-round perfection. The preparation I go through for competitions and performances is pretty much the same, but the actual event isn't always. Competitions can be much more stressful and worrisome, and it's hard not to be preoccupied with that 'voice inside your head.' Performances are much more about letting loose, and just going for broke.

"In the end," she says, "it really doesn't matter where you place in competition, but what you get out of it. The amount of preparation that went into the event stays with you and can only make you better in the long run."