Abigail Kent was awarded the silver medal in the 2019 Medallion International Concerto Competition in Atlanta. She will perform a concerto with the Orchestra Noir in their 2019–2020 season. “I was so elated to have made it to [super–finals], and even more so to get second place,” Kent says. “It’s so hard to be noticed in non–harp competitions that I was very surprised to receive any prize.” After a recording round in December 2018, Kent was selected as one of 17 finalists. At the first live round on March 23, Kent performed the second movement of the Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez. “I thought it was the most interesting movement—incredibly expressive but also impressive, since the cadenza is in that movement,” she says. Following that round, the jury chose five individuals for the super–finals, where Kent performed the Liszt Liebestraum No. 3.
The concerto competition’s prize winners with pictured with Orchestra Noir’s founder and conductor, from left: Anna Kozlakiewicz, Abigail Kent, Jason Ikeem Rodgers, and Edward Walton
Kent is the 2017–2019 American Harp Society Concert Artist. She is currently finishing her Master of Music degree at the Mannes School of Music where she studies with Emmanuel Ceysson. In the fall, she will begin a Doctoral of Musical Arts program with Nancy Allen at The Juilliard School as a Starr Doctoral Fellow. This July, she will be performing as one of 40 competitors in the 2019 USA International Harp Competition in Bloomington, Ind.
The Medallion International Concerto Competition is open to all ethnicities and nationalities from all countries and has no age limit. It was created to generate scholarships for music majors, and is affiliated with Orchestra Noir, Atlanta’s African American orchestra. First prize went to Edward Walton, and third prize was awarded to vocalist Anna Kozlakiewicz. For more information, please visit http://www.orchestranoir.com/.
