Applications Open for New York's 2023 Barbash Bach String Competition

The competition will be held at Stony Brook University, in Long Island, New York, on October 20, 2023

Open to international string players between 16 and 30 years of age, the Lillian and Maurice Barbash J.S. Bach String Competition is focused entirely on the unaccompanied string Partitas, Sonatas, and Suites of J.S. Bach.

The 2023 Finals will be held at Stony Brook University’s Staller Center Recital Hall at 1:00 PM on Friday, October 20, and will be live-streamed here on The Violin Channel.

In 2023, the jury will comprise Cynthia Roberts, Colin Carr, Daniel Stepner, Arthur Haas, and Ani Kavafian.

The 2023 Grand Prize Winner will receive $5,000, plus several performance invitations. They will be the featured soloist at the Island Symphony Bach Festival which will be held at 2:00 pm on Saturday, January 28, 2023, at St. Peter’s By-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Bay Shore, New York. The winner will receive an additional fee of $1,000 for this performance. The first prize winner will also be the featured soloist at a concert presented by the Amor Artis chamber chorus in New York City.

The second prize winner will receive a prize of $1,000.

Both prizewinners will also get the opportunity to perform in a joint concert hosted by the NYC-based Gothic Early Music Scene (GEMS). This concert will be streamed live, and the recording will be made available to the performers for their personal use.

Applications are to be received by June 10, 2023, and the finalists will be announced on Saturday, September 6, 2023. To apply, click here.

In 2022, the competition was won by double bassist Nina Bernat, who was recently announced as one of the 2023 recipients of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. She joins violinist Rachell Ellen Wong as a past Barbash competition winner who has gone on to win the grant.

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the competition, there will be a Gala Concert in NYC on December 1 that will include performances by past laureates, Rachell Ellen Wong, Lun Li, Tianyou Ma, and Nina Bernat.