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Sam Ginnett, boy soprano, will play the role of Amahl in Amahl and the Night Visitors by Menotti as performed by the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra on Dec. 3 & 4, 2011. Sam is a student of Mary Hofer and is in 7th grade at Ben Franklin Jr High.

The Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra is pleased to announce the winners of the biennial 2011-12 Young Artist Concerto Competition held on Saturday, September 10, 2011 in Michelsen Hall of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point College of Fine Arts and Communication. Eight talented high school musicians from central Wisconsin performed a memorized movement from a concerto of their choice. This year’s winner is Edward Schenkman of Marshfield, who performed Ernest Bloch’s “Suite Hebraique for Viola and Orchestra.” First runner-up is Annie Yao, violinist from Marshfield and violinist Wade Dittburner of Bancroft. The purpose of the competition is to provide a high-quality performance experience for the finest young performers from Central Wisconsin, and to assist them in pursuing advanced study.

“Teddy” Schenkman, age 16, began violin lessons at age 4 in Durham, North Carolina. Since moving to Marshfield, he has continued his studies with Mr. David Becker at the Aber Suzuki Center in Stevens Point. As principal viola, Teddy plays in the Marshfield High School Orchestra under Ms. Katherine Fitzgerald and in the Central State Chamber Orchestra under Mr. Becker. In addition he is a member of the Marshfield High School Quartet and the Earth Quartet of the Aber Suzuki Center. Teddy has played viola in the Middle and High School Wisconsin State Honors Orchestras for five seasons, including one season as principal. He has received exemplary certificates for his viola playing in the Wisconsin School Music Association competitions at the state level for the past two seasons. During the summers he attends the Greenwood Music Camp in western Massachusetts. Teddy is a senior at Marshfield High School in Marshfield, Wisconsin. He hopes to pursue a career in viola performance.

Schenkman will perform the winning piece with the CWSO at 7:30 p.m. on December 3rd and at 4:00 p.m. on December 4th, 2011 at the Theater @1800 in the Sentry Complex, 1800 Northpoint Drive, Stevens Point. The CWSO will also be performing “Polonaise” from “Christmas Eve Suite” by Rimsky-Korsakov, Corelli’s “Christmas Concerto,” an arrangement of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” by Stephenson and “Amahl and the Night Visitors” by Gian Carlo Menotti. The fully staged performance of “Amahl” will feature soprano Susan Bender in the role of the mother and will be performed in conjunction with the UW-Stevens Point Opera Workshop. These concerts are made possible by the generous sponsorship of Ministry Medical Group and Delta Dental. An additional performance of the work will be performed at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 4th for a Family Matinee sponsored by Security Health Plan. Tickets for all performances are available by calling the UW-Stevens Point box office: 715-346-4100 or toll-free: 800-838-3378, or visiting the box office web site:http://tickets.uwsp.edu/index.php. For more information, please visit the www.cwso.org.

Mikaela Schneider, a sixteen-year-old Aber Suzuki Center student from the Milwaukee area, performed in four concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. with Marvin Hamlisch, December 9-12. She also performed with Hamlisch and the Dallas Symphony December 4th and 5th. Hamlisch is a composer and conductor and wrote the music for such films as The Way We Were and Ordinary People and the adaptation of Scott Joplin’s music for The Sting.

Mikaela has studied voice with Mary Hofer since the age of 9. In the past three years she has performed with the Milwaukee Symphony Pops Orchestra, Present Music, the Milwaukee Children’s Choir, Music by the Lake, and was a National Anthem soloist for the Milwaukee Brewers. She also has been coached as UWSP by Professor Emeritus Marjorie Phelps Kampenga and studies flute with Jeani Foster of the Milwaukee Symphony.

After the Dallas Concert one reviewer said this:

“As a child prodigy himself (mimicking radio music on the piano at age five and accepted into what is now the Juilliard School Pre-College Division at age seven), Hamlisch knows aptitude when he sees it. For this weekend’s concert, he brought along a slew of young talent. Vocalist Mikaela Schneider, whom Marvin met a year ago in Wisconsin, sang a breathtaking “Ave Maria”, and had you not known otherwise, you would never guess by the sound of her beautifully graceful voice that she was only sixteen.”

The Aber Suzuki Center is very proud of Mikaela’s accomplishments and of her teacher, Mary Hofer. With well over 175 years of combined teaching experienced among the faculty, it is no wonder that the ASC has two other alumni who regularly perform at the Kennedy Center-- Eric Lee is associate concertmaster of the National Opera Orchestra and studied with Margery Aber. Joel Fuller, son of Kyoko & David Fuller, is a violinist in the National Symphony Orchestra and studied with Pat D’Ercole.