Joshua Peters receives Golden Violin Award
Joshua Peters, violin, has been named this year’s winner of the Golden Violin Competition, following an exciting public recital competition held on Sunday October 25th in Tanna Schulich Hall.
Both of the final contestants (Elizabeth Skinner, violin and Joshua Peters, violin) are current students at the school and were selected last Wednesday evening by the string faculty as finalists during the first round of the competition, which saw ten participants perform. All nominated students have demonstrated exceptional talent and contribution to musical and cultural life at the school.
Born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Joshua Peters is currently studying at the Schulich School of Music with Axel Strauss. Peters has collaborated with many renowned musicians including Menahem Pressler, Kim Kashkashian, André LaPlante, Steven Dann, and members of the Emerson, Concord, St. Lawrence, Guarneri and Pacifica quartets. He has also studied chamber music with members of the Alban Berg, Guarneri, Cleveland, Juilliard, Kronos, Miró, and Takács String Quartets. He has appeared as a soloist with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra on numerous occasions, as concertmaster of the McGill Symphony Orchestra, and as a member of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Peters has been coached by and performed works of prominent composers John Adams, Krzysztof Penderecki, Richard Wernick, Christos Hatzis, T. Patrick Carrabré and Randolph Peters. He was also a member of the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble from 2010-2012. Peters is the First Prize Winner of the 2015 Eckhardt-Gramatté Music Competition, the First Prize Winner of the 2014 WMC Doris McClellan Competition, and also wishes to acknowledge the support of the Sylva Gelber Foundation and the Manitoba Arts Council. Peters plays on a ca. 1869 J.B. Vuillaume Violin and Vuillaume model bow, on generous loan from the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank.
The Golden Violin itself, made of pewter and gold plate is on permanent display in Schulich’s Marvin Duchow Music Library and was a gift in 2006 from businessman and philanthropist Seymour Schulich. The nine past winners include Emmanuel Vukovitch, Lambert Chen, Chloé Dominguez, Aaron Schwebel, Ewald Cheung, Isaac Chalk, Baptiste Rodrigues and Victor Fournelle-Blain and Byung-Chan Lee.
The winner receives a cash award of $25,000, numerous performance opportunities and also receives a 14-karat gold lapel pin in the likeness of the Golden Violin. The five-member jury was comprised of Douglas McNabney, Laurence Kayeleh, Richard Roberts, Elizabeth Dolin and Stéphane Lemelin.
To celebrate the Golden Violin Award's 10th year, the very first laureate—violinist Emmanuel Vukovich—will return to Schulich for a special anniversary recital, to be recorded for national broadcast as part of the 37th CBC/McGill Series. This recital will take place November 1st at 3:30 p.m. in Tanna Schulich Hall.