6 teen musicians to perform in Grand Teton Music Festival scholarship competition – JHNewsAndGuide.com
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Updated: July 26, 2025 @ 12:10 am
Jackson’s own mezzo-soprano Grace Meadows won the $15,000 second prize in last year’s Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition at Walk Festival Hall. The 2025 competition is Saturday and Sunday.
Jackson’s own mezzo-soprano Grace Meadows won the $15,000 second prize in last year’s Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition at Walk Festival Hall. The 2025 competition is Saturday and Sunday.
Six teenage music students looking to continue their studies in college will vie for $50,000 in scholarships this weekend in the eighth annual Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition.
During the semifinal round, which starts at 10 a.m. Saturday in Walk Festival Hall, the six will perform 20-minute programs, including works by Saint-Saëns, Fauré and Mendelssohn, Bach, Beach and Barber, Dvorak, Shostakovich, Beethoven and even a couple of original compositions.
A panel of judges will narrow the field to three finalists, who will perform again at 1 p.m. Sunday to determine who wins $25,000, $15,000 and $10,000 prizes.
Both rounds are open to the public and free to attend.
The Runnicles competition is funded by an anonymous Grand Teton Music Festival donor who wished to honor the Scottish-born music director of the festival. The festival solicits applications from music students in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana in the spring. This year yielded 17 applicants according to Ashley Hernandez-Salinas, the festival’s community engagement manager.
Applications were screened in June with these six semifinalists selected: Bryce Wood, piano, Boise, Idaho; Benjamin Zielinski, flute, Florence, Montana; Charles R. Snellman, cello, Helena, Montana; Shelby Kay Cox, violin, Laramie, Wyoming; Evan Whipple, violin, Casper, Wyoming; and Aidan Kenneth Koch, French horn, Boise, Idaho.
The judges are Runnicles, longtime GTMF violinist Jenny Ross and six-year festival clarinetist José González Granero. Pianist Kimi Kawashima, who teaches at Westminster College in Utah and directs the NOVA Chamber Music Series, will accompany some performances.
Applicants have committed to continuing their education in classical, jazz or other areas of music in an accredited four-year program. Past winners have gone on to study at the University of North Texas, Brigham Young University Idaho, the Eastman School of Music and the New England Conservatory.
Last year’s winner, percussionist Evan DePaolo, of Casper, attended the University of Denver and this year will transfer to the San Francisco Conservatory, Hernandez-Salinas reported.
Tanner Jordan, who won the competition in 2019, soloed on Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Montana Youth Symphony last summer and is on his way to a career in music, Runnicles said.
Contact Richard Anderson via valley@jhnewsandguide.com.
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