OBU student wins 33rd annual piano competition

ARKADELPHIA — Carrie Brown was named the firstplace winner for the second yea r i n Ouach ita Bapt ist University’s Virginia Queen Piano Competition.

Brown, a senior piano performance major, performed “Sarcasms No.3” by Prokofiev and “Etude Transcendant No.10” by Liszt.

“To me, winning this competition is very important,” Brown said. “Being a performance major, I work hard and look for opportunities to perform, and winning this competition is a display of all the hard work I have put into my piano studies.”

Brown previously won the Virginia Queen competition as a sophomore in 2008. She has also earned first place honors at the 2009 NationalFederation of Music Clubs student/collegiate auditions and the Hot Springs Music Club scholarship auditions.

Brow n received a $700 prize with her first-place performance. The second-place winner was Grant Turner, a senior music major. Turner received a $300 prize for his performance of “Intermezzo, Op.116, No.6” by Brahms and “Satanic Apparition, Op. 4, No.4” by Prokofiev. Third place went to Jon Sanders, a sophomore music theory major. Sanders received a $150 prize for his performance of “Sonata, K.330. 1st movement” by Mozart and “Etude, Op.72, No.4” by Moszkowski.

“The competition is open to all Ouachita piano majors and minors,” said Lei Cai,OBU assistant professor of music. “Each year we invite a professional pianist with regional or national reputations from outside the university to judge the competition.” Ouachita alumnus David Glaze served as judge this year.

Glaze serves as minister of music at Trinity United Methodist Church in Little Rock, as well as artistic director and conductor of the 60-member River City Men’s Chorus. He has released two CDs, Christmas ... Simply, a piano album, and Pedals and Pipes, an organ album. He holds Bachelor of Music Education and Master of Music Education degrees from Ouachita.

Virginia Queen is a former Ouachita piano professor who taught at the university for more than 40 years. She established the competition and an endowment to fund it in 1977, while teaching at OBU, to motivate Ouachita’s piano majors to excel in their field. Contributors to the fund include Queen’s friends and former students, as well as Queen herself, who now lives in Little Rock.