Twenty finalists for 59th Besançon Competition
Competition for young conductors to kick off in September judged by seven jury members
The preliminary rounds of the 59th Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors ended on Friday, May 2 in Montreal, after Besançon, Seoul, Paris and Berlin. The following text is from the official press release.
After almost 5 hours of deliberation, Jaewon Kim (violin concermaster) and Jean-François Verdier (conductor), has selected twenty candidates for the final rounds:
Mr Sebastian ALMANZAR
Colombian, 30 years old
Ms Lunei ARAKI
Japanese, 23 years old
Ms Nefeli CHADOULI
Greek, 32 years old
Mr Simon CLAUSSE
French, 25 years old
Candidate selected in 2021 & 2023
Mr Kevin FITZGERALD
American, 34 years old
Mr Kyrian FRIEDENBERG
American, 26 years old
Mr Theodoros KAMERIS
Cypriot, 26 years old
Ms Josephine KORDA
British, 29 years old
Candidate in 2021 et semi-finalist in 2023
Mr Brian LIAO
Chinese Taipei, 33 years old
Ms Laura MATHIAS GENTILE
Brazilian, 30 years old
Mr Junping QIAN
Chinese, 35 years old
Semi-finalist in 2021
Mr Min Gyu SONG
Korean, 32 years old
Mr Leif TSE
Canadian, 25 years old
Mr Robin WALLINGTON
British, 29 years old
Mr Drummado WIJNHAMER
Dutch, 26 years old
Mr Tianyi XIE
Chinese, 21 years old
Mr Satoshi YONEDA
Japanese, 29 years old
Mr Yunosuke OKAMURA
Japanese, 26 years old
Mr Yingzhi ZHANG
Chinese, 24 years old
Mr Haozheng ZHU
Chinese, 25 years old
Some figures
Out of 304 applications, 271 candidates turned up for the auditions.
33 cancellations, 5 of which were due to visas not being granted in Canada.
Of the 20 candidates selected:
12 nationalities are represented
9 Asian candidates: 4 Chinese, 1 Chinese Taipei and 1 Korean
6 European candidates: French, Greek, Dutch, Cypriot and 2 British
5 American candidates: Canadian, Colombian, Brazilian and 2 Americans USA
4 women were part of the selection (+ 1 compared to 2023), in the same proportion as registrations (around 20%)
28 years old on average, with candidates aged between 21 and 35