The Heida Piano Competition Returns to MoCA Westport
Press ReleaseMoCA Westport will once again bring four rising stars in the piano world to Westport, CT to compete over the course of three days in one of America’s most celebrated cultural events, the 2022 Heida Hermanns Piano Competition. The competition will take place from August 11-13, 2022.
The competition was originally scheduled to take place in January 2022 but was postponed due to COVID-19.
The four finalists were selected through an extensive international application process that included video submissions of individual performances. Selected candidates include Katharine Benson (U.S.), Nathan Cheung (U.S.), Aaron Kurz (U.S.), and Artem Kuznetsov (Russia).
Judges for the final in-person competition include pianist Frederic Chiu of Beechwood Arts & Innovation and a previous Heida winner (Chairman of the Jury); Sara Davis Beuchner, one of the leading concert pianists of our time; and Argentine/American celebrated pianist Mirian Conti. Video audition jurists included Sahun Hong, Zhenni Li, and the 2019 Heida winner, Priscila Navarro.
The esteemed Alexander Platt will serve as the Artistic Director for the Heida Competition. Platt has built a unique career spanning the worlds of symphony, chamber music, and opera as conductor, music director, curator and host. Based in Chicago and New York, he is Music Director of the La Crosse Symphony, the Waukegan Symphony and the Wisconsin Philharmonic, he serves as the music director of the Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, New York during the summers, and is the Curator of Concerts at MoCA Westport.
Platt said of the Competition, “After a hiatus of over two years we are so thrilled that the Heida is back, and better than ever. In addition to four illustrious finalists, we shall be hosting all their performances at our beautiful MoCA campus, with our vintage Hamburg “D” grand piano now beautifully restored by Ivan Brunner, a skilled technician in the Hamburg Steinway traditions, who actually used to take care of the instrument when it was regularly used at Carnegie Hall.”
The winner receives a cash prize of $10,000, and each of the other finalists will receive a prize of $2,500.
Prior winners include celebrated pianists who have gone on to perform in the world’s most important halls, such as Spencer Myer, Frederic Chiu, Josh Wright, Timur Mustikimov, and Yue Chu.
The 2022 Heida Hermanns International Piano Competition will also spotlight the unjustly neglected music for solo piano of the important African-American composer, Nathaniel Dett. Born in Canada, Dett studied and made his career in the United States, and is one of the great American composers of the 20th century and a trailblazing figure in the history of Black composers of classical music. Clipper Erickson, the distinguished American pianist and a recognized scholar of Nathaniel Dett and his music, will serve as Artistic Advisor to the Heida 2022, and will lead a free lecture on Dett on Friday, August 12 at the Westport Public Library.
In addition to the finalist’s performances, the three-day event also includes master classes at the Westport Public Library and performances by the jury.
Tickets can be purchased for individual events or as a three-day package. Please visit theheida.mocawestport.org to learn more and purchase tickets. Tickets for the original January 2022 date will be valid for the August events.
The competition will take place within the context of MoCA Westport’s visually stunning exhibition, Women Pulling at the Threads of Social Discourse, on view through October 2, 2022.
MoCA Westport deeply appreciates the sponsors of the competition who help to bring the event to fruition. Sponsors for the Heida include Beechwood Arts and Innovation, Kristin Foster, Lance Lundberg and Terry McGuinness, Lux Bond & Green, Laura and Dogan Perese, and Cindy and John Vaccaro. MoCA Westport also thanks WSHU for serving as a media sponsor of the Heida competition.
About the Heida Competition
Heida Hermanns, the founder of the Connecticut Alliance for Music, Inc. (CAM), was a pianist, teacher and philanthropist. She was born in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1906 and received her first piano lessons from her mother. At the age of 15, she enrolled at the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik. Her teachers included Egon Petri, Artur Schnabel, Carl Friedberg and Isabella Vengerova. She made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at age 18 and toured Europe as a recitalist and concerto soloist through the 1920s and early 1930s.
Heida Hermanns immigrated to the United States in 1936 and made her New York debut at Town Hall in 1942. In the late 1940s, she moved to Connecticut and helped start the Friends of Music, an organization that presented chamber music concerts. Ms. Hermanns was also a founder of Performers of Connecticut that arranged performance opportunities for young musicians and sponsored the Heida Hermanns Young Performers Competition, known today as the Heida Hermanns International Music Competition. As audiences and memberships grew, the name was changed to Connecticut Alliance for Music, Inc.
