RNCM’s 2015 Gold Medal Winners

The RNCM held its tenth Gold Medal Competition on Saturday 13 June featuring 10 of the College’s finest performers and four of its leading young composers, who wrote new works for student ensemble A4 Brass (winners of the 2014 RNCM Chamber Ensemble of the Year Award).

Adjudicated by Meurig Bowen (Artistic Director of Cheltenham Music Festival), Dr Michelle Castelletti (RNCM Artistic Director), Sally Groves (former Creative Director, Schott Music), Professor Linda Merrick (RNCM Principal), and Edwin Roxburgh (composer), this year’s winners were undergraduate pianists Dominic Degavino and Tom Hicks, undergraduate flautist Amy Yule, and postgraduate composer Tom Harrold. Postgraduates Lucy Armstrong, composition, and Silvia Lucas, piano, were Highly Commended by the panel.

Professor Merrick said of this year’s event: ‘The RNCM’s much-coveted Gold Medal celebrates exceptional performance and composition by students at the College. Each year the competition between students is extremely high and 2015 was no exception. The overall standard was absolutely outstanding and everyone who competed, especially the four winners, should be extremely proud of their achievement.’

The other 2015 competitors were: saxophonist Gillian Blair, soprano Emma-Claire Crook, violist Alexander Mitchell, harpist Elinor Nicholson, pianist Iyad Sughayer, and composers Lucy Pankhurst and Anna Appleby.

Picture caption, from left to right: Silvia Lucas, Sally Groves, Dominic Degavino, Amy Yule, Tom Hicks, Linda Merrick, Edwin Roxburgh, Michelle Castelletti, Tom Harrold, Lucy Armstrong, Meurig Bowen

15 June 2015