Semi Finalists Announced at $100,000 Shanghai Violin Comp - Inc 2 VC Young Artists

The 18 Semi-Finalists have been announced at the 2016 Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition – including VC Young Artists Richard Lin and Zeyu Victor Li

The 18 Semi-Finalists have today been announced at the 2016 inaugural Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition, in Shanghai, China – including VC Young Artists Richard Lin and Zeyu Victor Li.

The 2016 Semi-Finalists are:

• VC Young Artist Richard Lin (United States/Taiwan)
• VC Young Artist Zeyu Victor Li (China)
• Kyung Ji Min (South Korea)
• Xiao Wang (China)
• Yiliang Jiang (China)
• Ji Won Song (South Korea)
• Yang Zhang (China)
• Mayu Kishima (Japan)
• Jinru Zhang (China)
• Yu-Ting Chen (Taiwan, China)
• Jee Won Kim (South Korea)
• Andrea Obiso (Italy)
• Elvin Ganiyev (Azerbaijan)
• Wendi Wang (China)
• Sergei Dogadin (Russia)
• Stefan Tarara (Germany)
• Ming Liu (China)
• Sirena Huang (US)

The 1st prize winner will receive an unprecedented US $100,000.

The 2016 jury comprises: David Stern (Co-Chairperson) Vera Tsu Weiling (Co-Chairperson), Boris Kuschnir, David Cerone, Daniel Heifetz, Zakhar Bron, Maxim Vengerov, Martin Engstroem, Emmanuel Hondré, Elmar Oliveira, Jian Wang, Zhenshan Wang and Lina Yu.

The competition, in a landmark decision earlier this year, announced they would provide full transparency of the 2016 competition scoring process – pledging to make 100% public each of the individual jurors’ scores and comments.

“After the First Round and Semi Final Round, the scores and comments for each eliminated competitor will be made public, and after the Final Round, all scores and comments of the 6 finalists will be revealed to the public … [and] we will match up each set of scores and comments with the juror who gave them,” 2016 Competition Executive President and President of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Fedina Zhou has told The Violin Channel.

“With the $100,000 monetary prize being the largest violin prize ever, we want to ensure complete transparency and fairness behind our process and judges … [and] we hope this initiative will set a new standard for transparency and fairness in music competitions worldwide,” Ms Zhou has said.

The competition will employ a double voting process for the 1st and Semi-Final rounds with advancement based on a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ vote – and a separate cross-check tally of points.

In the Final round each juror will indicate a ranking from ‘1-6’, with the prizes awarded based on the lowest averages.

The judges scores for those eliminated from the Opening Round, can be viewed at: http://bit.ly/2byMGNW.

“The ground rules for the voting process of the Shanghai competition are ideal,” outspoken advocate, Aaron Rosand from the Curtis Institute of Music has told The Violin Channel.

“It is good to see that at last a major competition is making an attempt for complete fairness after the corrupt results of recent competitions,” Mr Rosand, 88 has said.

PICTURED: 2016 Shanghai Issac Stern International Violin Competition Competitors, VC Young Artists Zeyu Victor Li, from China and Richard Lin, from Taiwan/United States