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Music Academy of the West 2024 Duo Competition Winners Announced

by Community Contributor • July 31, 2024 • Comments Off

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Shengyu Meng cello and Yoshino Toi piano – photo credit Zach Mendez

For immediate release

Music Academy of the West announces
2024 Duo Competition Winners
Shengyu Meng cello &
Yoshino Toi piano

Congrats to Shengyu Meng, Yoshino Toi, and all of our fellow finalists on their amazing performances!

Thank you to our adjudicators, Gabriel Campos Zamora, Jeremy Geffen, and Rita Sloan.

Shengyu and Yoshino will each receive the Grand Prize of a $5,000 cash award and digital assets for career promotion.

Shengyu Meng cello, from Shanghai, China, is earning her bachelor’s degree at the Colburn Conservatory of Music, where she studies cello with Clive Greensmith. The former principal cellist of the California Young Artist Symphony has been featured with the Colburn Orchestra, Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, and Burbank Philharmonic. She placed first in The Burbank Philharmonic’s 2023 Hennings-Fischer Young Artist Competition.

Yoshino Toi collaborative piano, from Tokyo, Japan, recently completed her Performance Diploma in Collaborative Piano as a Graduate Assistant at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, studying with Dr. Futaba Niekawa, Dr. Charles Prestinari, and Anne Epperson. She has previously studied with Norman Krieger, Dr. David Westfall, and Malgosia Lis. She will begin her Doctoral studies at the New England Conservatory in the fall.

For more Summer Festival information, download the
Music Academy Summer Festival
press kit

Shengyu Meng cello – photo credit Zach Mendez

About the Music Academy

Located in Santa Barbara, the Music Academy of the West creates a space where exceptional talent can thrive by encouraging artists to stretch, experiment, improvise, and play. The Music Academy provides artists with the tools they need to become not just great musicians but great leaders. The Music Academy’s programs include the annual eight-week Summer School & Music Festival which trains up to 150 fellows ages 18-34 and presents more than 130 performances and events, competitions, and a fully staged opera; Sing!, a children’s choir that performs with local, national, and international partners; the MAX (Music Academy Exchange) partnership with international orchestras; the innovative Alumni Enterprise Awards; and the Mariposa Series of concerts by Academy-affiliated artists. The 2024 Summer School & Festival takes place from June 12 through August 3. Learn more at musicacademy.org.