Violinist, Pianist duo win competition

A piano and violin duo from the Jacobs School of Music has won the 2011 Latin American Music Recording Competition.

Violinist Colin Scorgi and pianist Jooeun Pak performed pieces by Peruvian, Venezuelan and Uruguayan composers to beat out two other groups of finalists.

Pak credited Sorgi with the idea for their competition pieces, which she said melded their two sounds and highlighted their combined skill.

“I think during the performance and the competition, Colin and I had a great energy and musical correspondence,” Pak said.

Pak said the competition served to highlight the often under-represented world of Latin American classical music. While music students often study work by European composers, Pak said this competition provided an incentive for students to learn a
different style.

“The whole idea of the competition is so that people can play more Latin American music,” Pak said.

For Pak, the competition was also a chance to learn a new style and play alongside another talented musician.

“It was a wonderful opportunity for me to study with such a strong violinist,”
Pak said.

The contest, which grew from an annual program sponsored by the Latin American Music Center and the Embassy of Spain, celebrated its 50th anniversary with Jacobs.
In its new form, the competition rewards winners with the opportunity to produce a
polished record.

Thanks to their success in the competition, doctoral students Scorgi and Pak will have that chance, and — unlike in previous years — the winning CD will be made commercially available.

Scorgi and Pak will record a unified composition of Latin American music created during the last decade by six living composers of different nationalities. Some of the pieces were performed during their competition program. Another piece was commissioned by Scorgi and written by Jacobs School of Music student Francisco Cortés-Álvarez.

“As I was researching a bunch of different composers’ pieces, I found that the works that I was especially drawn to were all written extremely recently, within the past 10 years,” Scorgi said in an e-mail.

Studying to perform works by living composers has also given Scorgi the opportunity to directly contact some of them.

The LAMC was founded in 1961 by distinguished professor and musicologist Juan Orrego-Salas using seed money from the Rockefeller Foundation, LAMC Research Coordinator Luiz Lopes said.

In an effort to disseminate some of the knowledge stored in the center’s huge musical library, it produces published works and sponsors competitions like this one.

The center sponsors undergraduate- and graduate-level courses, as well as performances like the upcoming Valentine’s performance “Besame Mucho: The Greatest Latin Love Songs of All Time” on Sunday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.