Young Soloist | Wellesley Symphony

THE MICHAEL H. WELLES YOUNG SOLOIST COMPETITION

Application Deadline is noon on Friday, October 18, 2024

Auditions will be held on SUNDAY, November 10, 2024, between 8:30 am and 3:00 pm at the Dana Hall School of Music, 103 Grove Street, Wellesley Center.

The winner of the annual Wellesley Symphony Orchestra Young Soloist Competition will receive a $500 honorarium and will perform a movement from the audition piece for the WSO Family Concert, 2:00 pm Sunday, March 23, 2025, at MassBay Community College in Wellesley.

Directions to Dana Hall School from 95/128

Grove Street is a left turn off Rt 16W (Washington St) just before the Wellesley Center shopping area.

The Dana Hall School of Music building is a residential-appearing building with a front porch on the right-hand side of Grove Street.

APPLY EARLY! This Competition is usually filled before the application deadline. If your application is not acknowledged by email within a week, please contact Carol Davidson.

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE A LOCAL COMPETITION. The applicant must be a Massachusetts resident or studying with a teacher or attending school or taking part in a music program in the Boston area.

Complete this application (click here) and submit as instructed. There is no application fee. If you have questions, please contact Carol Davidson at carol.davidson@comcast.net

Competition rules:

Contestants must be 18 or under and still in high school or younger in March 2025.
All orchestral instruments including piano are eligible.
The audition piece must be one movement of a standard concerto or single-movement work, with orchestral accompaniment; 10 minutes maximum.
Playing from memory is encouraged but not required.
The Applicant’s music teacher must support this audition.
Applicants are required to provide an accompanist. If not known at this time, please enter "TBD" for accompanist name. It is best to find an accompanist early on and submit your time constraints with your accompanist in mind—do so as early as possible. Finding an accompanist at the last minute can result in schedule issues that cannot be addressed then.
Plan to arrive early enough to warm up. You will be given a practice room for this purpose.
If you are unavoidably late on the day of the audition, call (THAT DAY ONLY) 508-631-0548 - Carol Davidson's cell phone.
DO NOT call the Dana Hall School of Music.

ANNOUNCING THE 2023 MICHAEL H. WELLES YOUNG SOLOIST COMPETITION WINNER

Adalia Wen, from Weston, MA, has been studying the piano since she was four. She is currently a junior at the Rivers School and studies with Alexander Korsantia. Besides solo piano, she also takes part in various chamber music ensembles at the Rivers School Conservatory (as part of the ChamberMusicLab program), at the New England Conservatory, at her high school, and with independent projects.

Adalia also studies the guzheng (the Chinese zither) and composition. She enjoys arranging pieces for her friends and herself to perform at school concerts and local contemporary music festivals.

Adalia has won other notable first prizes, including the 2021-22 MTNA Competition in Massachusetts, the 2022 Rivers School Conservatory Concerto Competition, the 2022 Fidelity Investments Young Artists Competition, and the 2022 Steinway Society Piano Competition, Division II.

Adalia credits every one of her mentors and teachers, her fellow student musicians, her fellow non-musician friends, her siblings, and probably most of all, her parents, for inspiring her love for music.

Outside of music, Adalia also enjoys reading, writing poetry, the language of Latin, snowboarding, shooting, and competitive games.

Adalia will be performing the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, op. 37, with the Wellesley Symphony on Sunday, March 24, 2024, 3:00 pm at MassBay Community College. Please join us in celebrating Adalia's achievement!

ANNOUNCING THE 2022 MICHAEL H. WELLES YOUNG SOLOIST COMPETITION WINNER

Brian Lee, from Belmont, MA, began learning the cello at the age of 7 with teacher Eugene Kim. He is now 17 years old and attends the Belmont Hill School. He currently serves as the Associate Principal Cellist of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and toured Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, Corfu, Dodoni, and Delphi, performing with prominent soloists Zlatomir Fung and Soprano Sofia Fomina. He has participated in various chamber groups at the New England Conservatory and the Rivers School Conservatory.

Brian was the winner of the Massachusetts Music Teachers Association Bay State String Contests as well as the 5th Roman Totenberg Young Strings Competition. Recently, he won first place in the American Protégé International Competition of Romantic Music, and the Grand Prize of the Vision Competition.

Outside of cello, Brian is both the captain of his school’s Varsity Nordic Ski team and a Varsity coxswain, and loves coding, photography, and studying Latin/Greek.