Chandler Starr Miller Scholarship Competition

Well, Well, Well... Another year, another competition.

Today was the Chandler Starr Miller Scholarship Competition in which I was a participant in the Senior Piano Division. This competition is an annual competition sponsored by the Mendelssohn Performing Arts Center in Rockford, IL. This year I was scheduled to play the third movement of J.S. Bach's Italian Concerto, and Fantasie Impromptu by F. Chopin.

We arrived at the church around 4:25pm, and proceeded inside around 4:30pm (my performance time was 4:45pm). The Senior Piano Division was performing in the 2nd Congregational Church this year, instead of in the Emerson Auditorium where it has been hosted in the past. The Church is a beautiful place, and they do have a very nice piano there, for which I was very grateful. After registering just outside the Sanctuary, we headed up to the warm-up room, where I was very pleased with the warm, flexible, and relaxed state of my fingers at the time. We headed back downstairs and waited around for the monitor (who this year happened to be my piano teacher) to take us into the sanctuary.

When I got into the sanctuary, I was able to play a few chords, and a scale to warm up. The piano was very beautiful, except for a C# (the one an octave above middle C) that was terribly out of tune. Unfortunately, due to a number of things, I had a very hard time concentrating on the music.

The performance went very well, except for a couple things. At one point at the end of the Italian Concerto I made a mistake that just came out of the blue. I'm not sure why it happened, but it did, and I was able to make a quick recovery from it. Over all, I felt good about the performance of that piece.

The Fantasie Impromptu went well, except for a couple of rolling left hand chords that I didn't get right. These wouldn't have been too bad in my mind, except for that on the repeat, I did it again. That's the killer, especially since it wasn't a difficult part at all. Then, the last problem that I had was that as the piece was winding down, getting quieter and quieter, my hands got a little out of sync. In getting my left and right hand back in sync, I had to repeat a measure. Ouch!

When we were leaving the place, I had no clue where I was going to land placement wise. I knew that other than these few mistakes, my performance was rock solid. But I also know that bad music makes a stronger impression than good music. And I wasn't sure how strongly those mistakes had tipped the scales.

Needless to say, I was very surprised about an hour and a half later, when I found out that I had won second place! People always say that second place is the worst, and I'm here to say that I think it is. But it got even worse when I found out that I lost to a girl who won first place in the junior division last year!

Argh!

Oh well, there's always next year, and the College Division. (proof I'm from Chicago)