Winners of 2023 Victor Elmaleh Competition announced

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The US Concert Artists Guild (CAG) has announced the winners of its 2023 Victor Elmaleh Competition. All winners will receive international management across Europe and the Americas jointly with CAG and Young Classical Artists Trust (YCat) in London, as well as performance opportunities at Merkin Hall in New York and Wigmore Hall in London.

The winners include two string quartets, the Dior (pictured) and the Abeo, as well as violinist Njioma Chinyere Grevious, double bassist Nina Bernat, and the Bestfriends Duo, made up of violinist Strauss Shi and guitarist Tengyue (T.Y.) Zhang.

Earlier this year, Grevious took the first prize and $50,000 at the 2023 Sphinx Competition. She also received the $5,000 Audience Choice prize. She is a graduate of the Juilliard School where she studied with Ronald Copes, and is also violinist with the Abeo Quartet. Bassist Nina Bernat is a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and has won first prize at the Barbash J.S. Bach String Competition, the Minnesota Orchestra Young Artist Competition and the Juilliard Double Bass Competition. The Abeo Quartet is the inaugural Graduate String Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Delaware under the mentorship of the Calidore String Quartet. It won the third prize at the 2023 Bad Tölz International String Quartet Competition and took silver medals at the 2022 Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition and 2019 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. The Dior Quartet is Quartet-in-Residence at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto and won silver at the 2021 Chesapeake competition and bronze at the Fischoff in 2019. The Bestfriends Duo met at Juilliard; violinist Strauss Shi took first prizes at the USC Thornton Concerto Competition, Mondavi Center Young Artists Competition and United States International Music Competition.

This year’s CAG jury comprised Kazem Abdullah, Jenny Bilfield, Adriaan Fuchs, John Glover, Shirley Kirshbaum, Gaetan Le Divelec, Anne Akiko Meyers and Conrad Tao. Previous winners have included violinists Geneva Lewis, Yoojin Jang, In Mo Yang and Alexi Kenney, and quartets including the Aizuri, Argus, Verona and PUBLIQuartet.

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