Academy Alumnus Matthew Lipman Wins at WAMSO
January 16, 2012
Congratulations to MIC Academy Alumus Matthew Lipman, viola, WAMSO Young Artist Competition first place and Grand Prize winner! Lipman was awarded First Place plus the Grand Prize, which has only been awarded 8 times in 56 years. In addition to cash prizes, he will solo with the Minnesota Orchestra at a subscription concert. The Young Artist Competition, WAMSO's longest running education program, discovers and encourages exceptional young musical talent through a regional competition. Young performers come from eleven Midwest states and two Canadian provinces.
A native of Illinois, violist Matthew Lipman is currently an undergraduate student at the Juilliard School of Music where he studies with Heidi Castleman and Misha Amory. He has performed with the Ars Viva Symphony, the Capital City Symphony, the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, and the Southwest Symphony, in major halls across America and Europe, including Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, and has collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Paul Katz, and Rachel Barton Pine.
Hailed by the Chicago Tribune for his “splendid technique and musical sensitivity” and “warm, burnished, singing tone,” Lipman is fast emerging as one of America’s most exciting young talents. His professional debut with the Ars Viva Symphony was named “the Most Impressive Debut” in Chicago Classical Review’s “Top 10 Performances of 2010.” He has won First Prize at the Johansen International String Competition, the Blount-Slawson Young Artists Competition, the American String Teachers Association National Solo Competition, and the Music Institute of Chicago Concerto Competition, among many others. He has been featured often on the acclaimed National Public Radio show From the Top, along with its PBS television counterpart, through which he won a prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award. Matthew is also the current recipient of a Career Grant from the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation.
An avid chamber musician, Matthew was a member of Quartet Polaris, which was awarded the Gold Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has collaborated with prominent artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Paul Katz, and Rachel Barton Pine, and has performed in masterclasses for violists Pinchas Zukerman, Tabea Zimmermann, Kim Kashkashian, Roberto Diaz, Paul Coletti, Lawrence Dutton, and Helen Callus. Matthew has attended the Perlman Music Program, London Master Classes, and NFAA YoungARTS Week and previously studied with Matthew Mantell and Roland Vamos at the Academy of the Music Institute of Chicago.
He performs on a fine viola by Matteo Goffriller, 1700, on generous loan from the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation.
