Support the Open Piano Competition 2013??

[openpianocompetition]

The Open Piano Competition (OPC) is founded on the concept that pianists, both professional and those whose profession is not connected to playing the piano, are able to perform alongside and compete against each other in the same competition, for the same prizes. There's no upper age limit, so if you're thinking of getting back to playing after a long time off and need a goal to aim for, or you are an established pianist already and want another performance and competition opportunity, then this is the competition for you.

We ran a small but hugely successful first Open Piano Competition in London, last October, entirely funded by the directors of the competition itself. We were featured in BBC's In Tune programme with Clara Rodriguez, one of our panel of judges, as part of their piano season, which we felt was a massive achievement given our scant exposure prior to the event itself.

The OPC is clearly onto something. We are new, unique, fresh and fair, and we want to grow. Last year despite our relative anonymity, we gained the support of one of the biggest names in the classical piano world as our jury chairman, Dr. Leslie Howard, and we we attracted 41 pianists from 19 countries around the world, whose age ranged from a young 18 to a ripe 76 years old!

Here are some things our competitors and colleagues said about us:

Valentin Bogolubov, winner of OPC 2012 1st Prize: "the OPC is so unique, so important and such a beautiful initiative that you must continue to give the opportunity to pianists in the world!!"

Marianna Prjevalskaya, OPC Artistic Director: "I am very happy that this competition offers the opportunity to performers who are beyond 30, beyond 40 years old. We have competitors who are 64, and I can see that they are wonderful. I am so happy that they have the opportunity to perform and to compete, and hopefully get the prize."

Clara Rodriguez, OPC 2012 judge: "With music, one should be able to just carry on developing, and it gives freedom to people to be able to present their work at any age, and that's really important. It's a fantastic idea that this piano competition has launched."

Yuki Negishi, OPC 2012 judge: "I'm very excited about this competition because it mixes professionals and amateurs, I think that's a very innovative idea, and I've never heard of it before..and I sense a very friendly atmosphere. Amateurs often have other careers, maybe they aspired to become a concert pianist when they were younger, so they trained hard, or maybe they are be so gifted that they can simply do many things, so why rule them out?!"

Vivian Fan, winner of the "Spirit of the OPC" award, 2012: "I have been an accompanist for about 10 years now and I really miss playing solo. Prepping for this competition has been really great for my psyche and technique, and getting back to a solo repertoire really opened up a new world for me, so this is a wonderful experience for me."


Dominic Smith, winner of OPC 2012 3rd prize: "This is the fourth competition I've done but the other three have been all specifically amateur, so it's really exciting. Although this is a competition, it's a really nice and new idea to bring musicians together. It's being done for the music. For me, the music is an escape and it's something I need to be able to do my job."

While our first event was successful, we need your help to raise money for its success a second time around. If we succeed a second time, we hope this will kick start us to be able to provide continued performance and competition opportunities to pianists regardless of age, musical training or background, year after year, in different cities around the world.

Challenges faced are when to advertise, with whom, in what media and where. Magazine, social networking sites, our own website; it all costs money. The more advertising we pay for, the more entries we hope to get, thus the more likelihood we can hold the competition. If we don't advertise, we don't get entries and we don't have a competition to run!

However, advertising the event is only one way to get entries. If a competitor sees that we haven't yet got a venue in which to hold the event, or a panel of judges to adjudicate the event, or facilities to record the event, they're quickly put off and decide not to enter in spite of the prizes up for grabs.

Venue hunting in Turin, Italy, isn't easy. Hall rental costs are high and so is piano hire.

The biggest risk we face is, after successfully raising money to help advertise our event and book venues, judges and personnel, audio equipment hire, piano hire and everything else we need for it to run smoothly, we still don't get enough interest from the piano playing public, and therefore we can't run the competition. This is worst case scenario. As I've already stated, we had 41 entrants last year; we can only grow on this.

The competition's financial prizes will be covered by entry fees and failing that, by the directors of the competition. What we need Kickstarter's help with is the following: venue hire; piano hire; audio and video equipment hire; printing costs; advertisement costs.

We need this support from you to ensure that we can run this second Open Piano Competition which will hopefully become another huge success, and further, enable us to find corporate and/or private sponsors for the third and subsequent editions. Should we raise more funds than needed to run the OPC 2013 smoothly, the surplus will be invested in further promotion of the OPC 2014, which should hopefully mean the competition can fund itself in the future. This is clearly an opportunity which is highly desirable to the piano playing public and we want to be able to provide it every year.

Please have a look at our project on: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/190288337/open-piano-competition-turin-italy-2013

[openpianocompetition]

And if you would like to apply to have the chance of competing for some useful monetary prizes, please visit www.openpianocompetition.com/apply. Entry fees for full time students are £75 and for non-students: £125. We look forward to hearing from you!

[thalbergmad]

How about supporting pianostreet and stop using it as a free advertising board??

Thal

[steinway43]

What are the questions on the application (other than the obvious name, address, dates and places of music study)?