Ege Izmirli, piano (Winner)

Ege Izmirli is a high school senior at The Williams School in Connecticut. He has been playing the piano since the age of seven, but he began more serious study with Steinway Artist Yoshie Akimoto in 2010, after attending Brevard Music Festival. Since then, he has covered a large amount of repertoire, including several substantial works of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mussorgsky, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. He has also begun to participate in competitions, winning the Schubert Awards in the French Composer and Chopin competitions and receiving a superior rating in the Young Musicians Festival at Fairfield University. He recently began to study composition from Professor Art Kreiger of Connecticut College, composing a piece for piano and clarinet, called Poltergeist, that was performed at the Charles Shackford Memorial Concert. At college, Ege hopes to pursue a double degree in music and physics.