The Emerging Artists Series NSW

Since moving to a larger piano showroom in Willoughby in 2009, Theme & Variations has been able to share the space with clients, friends and music-lovers at casual and intimate concerts more regularly. With the aim to give young pianists around NSW the opportunity to give their own recital to the public, Emerging Artists features one secondary and one tertiary pianist at each event.

With the main focus of Emerging Artists to give young pianists more performance experience and exposure, there are no cash prizes given for outstanding performers. Instead, our secondary pianists receive constructive feedback from an experienced performer and educator. For the more mature tertiary performers, we give the most outstanding pianist the opportunity to fly to the Steinway Dealer (link to http://www.lewiseady.co.nz/) in Auckland New Zealand to give a concert at their showroom. Further to this, the winner also receives the chance to perform another recital at Campbelltown Arts Centre.

In the final concert of each year, Theme & Variations hosts a reciprocal solo recital for the winner of the Emerging Artists Series of Auckland, New Zealand. In 2010, we had Jason Bae perform.

Past Winners (NSW)

• Camellia Wong (2010)
• Jeremy So (2009)

Adjudicator Profile

Since the series started, Professor Michael Brimer has been adjudicating every concert. Professor Brier has a broad musical background as pianist, chamber musician, organist, conductor and academic. Studies at the University of Cape Town, the Royal College of Music and the Royal School of Church Music in London and at the University of Cambridge, led to an academic career that brought appointments at the University of Western Australia as Lecturer, Monash University as Senior Lecturer, the University of Natal as Foundation Professor of Music, the University of Cape Town as Dean of the Faculty of Music and the University of Melbourne where he was for nine years the Ormond Professor of Music and for five years Dean of the Faculty.

He was appointed Professor Emeritus on leaving Melbourne and subsequently has been based in Sydney while performing and lecturing. He has performed the complete series of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas five times, has performed the complete piano music of Schumann in a live broadcast recital series and broadcast the complete sonatas of Schubert. He has performed all four of Tchaikovsky’s works for piano and orchestra in a series with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.