Talented pair share 2024 Perse Musician of the Year title
Guitarist William Walker (Year 11) and pianist Qiqi Shao (Year 9) have been crowned joint-winners of the 2024 Perse Musician of the Year competition.
The talented pair’s performances in the grand final could not be separated by adjudicator Mark Simpson, a world-renowned clarinettist and composer who won the BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 2006.
Playing electric guitar, William opened the concert with two of his own songs, Tribute Intro and If, as well as displaying his dexterity on renditions of Guthrie Govan’s Fives, Full Throttle by Igor Paspalj and Steve Vai’s work Eugene’s Trick Bag.
Meanwhile, Qiqi brought the curtain down on the competition with recitals of two Chopin pieces – Nocturne Op. 48 No 1 in C minor and Etude Op. 10 No 1 in C major – as well as Debussy’s Reverie.
As well as William and Qiqi, the final featured violinist Francesca He (Year 7), clarinettist Alicia Li-Yan-Hui (Lower Sixth), French horn player Adrian Lau (Year 11) and singer Kevin Han (Upper Sixth), with all the musicians having qualified from individual instrumental/vocal finals during Lent term.
William said: “I wasn’t expecting to win as everyone was amazing, so I’m really happy about it.
“I love writing my own music and try to do a range of styles, so my intro was a Baroque, neo-classical piece with lots of fast runs from Paganini and Eddie Van Halen and my other piece was mellow and much simpler in a blues style.
“I like the energy and versatility of the guitar as well as the complexity of playing solos, so I chose the other pieces as they were technically very challenging.
“Fives has a complex time signature but also allows you to improvise the solo, Full Throttle has a tempo of 195 bpm, while the Steve Vai piece is flamboyant and very dramatic.”
Qiqi commented: “I was really pleased to have won because I worked very hard practising for it.
“I was really nervous because I was the last one performing and it was such a high standard competition.”
Explaining his choice of programme, Qiqi said: “I really like Nocturne because it reflects Chopin’s emotions very well. He was sick at the time when he composed it and you can feel the anguish and desperation in the music, while Etude is technically very hard to play so offered that kind of challenge.
“I wanted a calm finish, so I chose to play Debussy’s Reverie because it’s very dreamlike and ethereal.”
Francesca was highly commended for her performances of Wieniawski’s Scherzo-Tarantella and Symphonie Espagnole in D minor by Lalo.
Alicia provided excellent recitals of works by Malcolm Arnold and Weber and Adrian performed a fantastic programme featuring pieces by Beethoven, Krol and Mozart, while Kevin brought his beautiful baritone to a range of styles from opera (Bois Epais by Lully) to the traditional English folk of Foggy, Foggy Dew.
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