The Prima Trio, an Oberlin Conservatory of Music Student Ensemble, Wins the Coveted Grand Prize at the 2007 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition

The Trio also Captures the Gold Medal in the Senior String Division

*Editors please note: biographical information is included.

May 17 , 2007 -- The Prima Trio, a student chamber ensemble from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College, has won the coveted 2007 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition’s Grand Prize ($7,500) and the Gold Medal ($3,000) in the Senior String Division. The competition took place May 11 through 13, 2007. The Senior Division finals round and a grand-prize winner’s concert and reception were held in Leighton Concert Hall at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

The Prima Trio — Farhad Hudiyev ‘08 (violin), Boris Allakhverdyan ’08 (clarinet), and Anastasia Dedik AD ’06 (piano) — emerged from a competitive field of 47 ensembles from across the U.S. and around the world to capture the top prizes. Hudiyev, from Turkmenistan, studies with Professor of Violin Milan Vitek; Allakhverdyan, of Russia, is a student of Associate Professor of Clarinet Richard Hawkins; Dedik, also from Russia, earned an artist diploma at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music following studies with Professor of Piano Sedmara Z. Rutstein.

In addition to prize money, the trio will participate in a Winner’s Tour of the Midwestern United States in October, and will participate in the Emilia Romagna Festival in Italy in 2008.

For the senior quarterfinals in the string division, held on Friday, May 11, each of the 12 ensembles submitted a program at least 40 minutes in length. The quarterfinal jurors choose 20-minutes’ worth of select movements or segments from this repertoire for them to perform. The Prima Trio’s complete repertoire consisted of Aram Khachaturian’s Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano; Darius Milhaud’s Suite for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano, Op. 157b; and Peter Schickele’s Serenade for Three. After the trio advanced with five other ensembles to the semifinals round, held on Saturday, a new set of jurors repeated the process, albeit with a different combination of movements and segments. There were two ensembles left standing by Sunday’s finals. The Prima Trio was announced as winner of both the grand and gold prizes that afternoon, and performed their repertoire, in its entirety, at a grand-prize winner’s concert held that evening.

“We are extraordinarily proud of the Prima Trio and I’m very pleased to offer them my heartiest congratulations,” says Dean of the Conservatory David H. Stull.

The Prima Trio joins an exclusive rank of ensembles formed at Oberlin to have won the Fischoff Competition. Its predecessors are the acclaimed new-music sextet eighth blackbird, all of whom were Oberlin students when they formed their ensemble, and the Miró Quartet, whose first violinist and cellist were Oberlin students when the group was born. Past Fischoff winners whose personnel included Oberlin-trained musicians when they won are the Jupiter, Fry Street, and Pacifica quartets.

Jurors for the Senior Division were violist Heidi Castleman of the Juilliard School and the Perlman Music Program; cellist Norman Fischer ’71 of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and the Concord String Quartet; pianist Evelyne Brancart, Chair of the Piano Department at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music; hornist Douglas Hill, Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin; saxophonist Donald Sinta, Earl V. Moore Professor of Saxophone at the University of Michigan; and tubist Kathleen Aylsworth Brantigan of the Denver Brass.

THE PRIMA TRIO

The Prima Trio, which features violinist Farhad Hudiyev, clarinetist Boris Allakhverdyan, and pianist Anastasia Dedik, was formed in 2004 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The Prima Trio’s performances throughout the United States including appearances at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Oakton Chamber Music Series in Washington D.C., and in Virginia, Indiana, Oregon, and California, among other states. In June 2006 the ensemble participated in the Hampden-Sydney Chamber Music Festival (Hampden-Sydney, Virginia). As grand-prize winners of the prestigious 2007 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, their future engagements include appearances at the Emilia Romagna Music Festival in Modena, Italy, in 2008, and concerts in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan in October 2007
BORIS ALLAKHVERDYAN, clarinet

Boris Allakhverdyan was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1984. He started taking clarinet lessons from his father at the age of 9, and later entered the Moscow Conservatory Pre-College Division. Upon his graduation in 2001, he was accepted to the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he studied with Professor Raphael Bagdasarian and earned a Bachelor of Music degree (with honors) in 2006. He is currently enrolled in the Artist Diploma program at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studies with Associate Professor of Clarinet Richard Hawkins. Mr. Allakhverdyan has won numerous competitions, including first prize at the Hellam Young Artist’s Competition (Springfield, Missouri, 2007) and second prize awards in 2000 at the Rozanov International Clarinet Competition (Moscow) and the Rimsky-Korsakov Clarinet Competition (St. Petersburg, Russia). He has performed as a soloist and with orchestras in Russia, Germany, Denmark, Venezuela, and the United States. He has also participated in numerous music festivals, including the International Music Festival (Offenbach, Germany, 1999); the Musical Kremlin Festival (Moscow, 2003); and the Hampden-Sydney Music Festival (Hampden-Sydney,Virginia, 2006). In 2007, Mr. Allakhverdyan will attend the Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland, under the direction of Pierre Boulez, in August, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival of the Yale School of Music in July and August. In March 2007 he won an audition for the second clarinet position of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra in Ohio.

ANASTASIA DEDIK, piano

Anastasia Dedik was born in 1981 in St. Petersburg, Russia, to a family of musicians, and started taking piano lessons from her mother at the age of 5. In 1999 she graduated from the pre-conservatory division of the St. Petersburg Conservatory (under the instruction of Asya Rubina) and was accepted to the Conservatory without any exams, studying at first with Professor Elena Shishko and then Professor Valery Vishnevsky, under whom she earned a Bachelor of Music and a Master of Music degree in 2004. She has participated in the master classes and studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky, Natalia Trull, Andrey Diev, Lev Naumov, Vladimir Krainev, Edith Fisher, Russell Sherman, Vladimir Viardo, and Mario Delli Ponti. In 2006 Ms. Dedik earned an Artist Diploma at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, following studies — on a full talent scholarship — with Professor of Piano Sedmara Z. Rutstein.

Ms. Dedik has won top prizes in numerous international piano competitions dating back to 1994, when she took second prize in the Music de France International Piano Competition in Paris. Her first prize awards include those from the Frederic Chopin Piano Competition (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2000); the Maria Judina International Piano Competition (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2002); the Oberlin Concerto Competition (Oberlin, Ohio, 2004); the Russian International Piano Competition (San Jose, California, 2005); the Lee Biennial Piano Competition (Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 2006); the Rovero d’Oro International Piano Competition (San Bartolomeo, Italy, 2006); and the Buono and Bradshaw International Piano Competition (New York, New York, 2007).

Her 2006 performances include concerts in Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; and Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, representing the Oberlin Conservatory of Music under the auspices of the center’s Conservatory Project Series. In April 2006, she was featured on the Steinway Society of the Bay Area’s Young Artists Concert in San Jose, California. David Beech, a critic for Peninsula Reviews, wrote that her playing “brought tears to the eyes. … This was highly accomplished and authentically Russian pianism.” Ms. Dedik has performed as soloist and featured pianist with orchestras in Russia, Germany, Italy, Greece, Slovakia, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Holland, and the United States. Her 2007-08 concert season will include an October 2007 performance at Carnegie Hall (as part of her first prize award at the Buono and Bradshaw competition), and other venues throughout the U.S. as well as concerts in Italy, Germany, and Russia. She will be participating in the Van Cliburn Piano Festival in Fort Worth, Texas in June 2007.  

Upcoming teaching engagements include the Casalmaggiore Music Festival in Italy in July 2007 and a master class and recital at the University of South Dakota and at Augustana College (Sioux Falls) in October 2007.

Ms. Dedik was accepted with full tuition scholarships to Yale University’s School of Music, the Mannes School of Music, and the Juilliard School. In fall 2007 she will continue her education at Juilliard, pursuing an Artist Diploma under the tutelage of Professors Matti Raekallio and Yoheved Kaplinsky.

FARHAD HUDIYEV, violin

Farhad Hudiyev (violin) is originally from Ashgabad, Turkmenistan, where he studied violin and composition with Vera Abaeva at the Special Music School. He distinguished himself at the age of 10 as the youngest performer ever selected to play with the National Violin Ensemble of Turkmenistan, and at 12 he won a scholarship to attend the New Names Festival in Suzdal, Russia, which was sponsored by the Moscow Conservatory. He was named the most promising young musician at the festival, and earned the top award, the Golden Apple. Mr. Hudiyev has performed in Ashgabad, Suzdal, Moscow, and Odessa (Ukraine) as both a soloist and as a member of the violin ensemble of Turkmenistan. He came to the United States in 2001 under a full scholarship with the Interlochen Arts Academy, where he studied with Paul Sonner and Michael Albaugh. Currently in his second year of study with Professor of Violin Milan Vitek at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Mr. Hudiyev won an honorable mention in the 2004 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer awards, held in May 2004 at Lincoln Center in New York, for his symphonic work Turkmenistan. In June 2006, he won third prize and a $1,000 scholarship at the 30th Annual Glenn Miller Competition, held in Clarinda, Iowa, the legendary musician’s birthplace. His other awards include the Neil Rabaut Composition Prize from the Interlochen Arts Academy.

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Media Contacts:

Marci Janas
Director of Conservatory Media Relations
O: 440-775-8328
C: 440-667-2724
Marci.Janas@oberlin.edu

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