Announcing the NBS Solo & Concerto Competition for 2025
The Nelly Berman School of Music is excited to present this competition to provide our hard-working piano, string and wind students with an opportunity to practice towards a special goal: to learn and compete with a serious form of classical music — the concerto. Participating in this event will give our students an unforgettable experience for their future!
The concerto aspect of this year’s competition will be concertos from the Baroque, Classical, & Beyond periods. 10 winners of this competition will get the chance to perform with our NBS Faculty String Quartet, thus the movement of the concerto needs to have predominantly string instruments as accompaniment.
The Solo category of this year’s competition will be solo works from the Baroque, Classical, & Beyond periods. Platinum and Gold medalist in each age category will be chosen to perform at the beautiful Church of the Redeemer on February 9th. Our Silver and Bronze medalists in each age category will perform at the Winners Recital at the NBS Recital Room, date TBA.
- Deadline to apply and submit music is December 20, 2024
- Rehearsals must be completed between December 16th and January 11th
- Auditions for all competitors will be held on Sunday, January 12th at NBS
- The Winners’ Concerts will be on Sunday, February 9th at the Church of the Redeemer
Prizes Include:
- One FULL (100%) scholarship to a week of NBS Summer Camp
- Half (50%) scholarship for a week of NBS Summer Camp
- Quarter (25%) scholarship for a week of NBS Summer Camp
- Featured performance on Main Line TV
- Featured performance on NBS YouTube Channel
- Gift Cards
- Free Lessons at NBS
- All students will receive medals and certificates for platinum, gold, silver and bronze scores
Competition Requirements
Deadline to Apply & Submit Piano Accompaniment: December 1, 2024
- $86 audition fee written out to NBSCMI (all audition fees and concert tickets will benefit the NBSCMI 501(c)3 Scholarship Program)
- All participants must rehearse & audition with piano accompaniment (orchestra-piano transcription) – rehearsal fees will vary by length and frequency
- Please inquire in the Office about the piano accompanist fee for audition
- All participants must have had at least one (1) rehearsal by December/January (DATE TBA) – make sure to include your full rehearsal availability on the Google Form
- Send a scan of your piano accompaniment to [email protected] (accompanists and judges will still need a hard copy of your music)
- Concerto Competition Platinum Winners only: $450 concert fee to perform with the NBS Faculty String Quartet, which includes a rehearsal and a concert performance
- Gold Winners: will perform at the separate Concerto Competition Winners’ Concert with piano accompaniment. Please inquire in the Office about the piano accompanist fee for the Winners’ Concert (DATE TBA)
*For Zelle: make sure you do NOT send to the account you use for tuition
We hope you will join us in making this another memorable event!
Introducing our 2025 Solo and Concerto Competition Judges!
Dr. Daniel Schlosberg
NBS Alumnus
Our Director, Elena Berman, was Daniel’s first piano teacher!
Brooklyn-based composer, pianist, music director, and arranger Dan Schlosberg’s music has been performed by the Dover Quartet, Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Minnesota Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, Albany Symphony, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, and Lorelei Ensemble, at venues including Carnegie Hall, (le) poisson rouge, The Kennedy Center, Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Beijing Modern Music Festival, and David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption. Current projects include the new love-in-the-time-of-climate-apocalypse opera The Extinctionist (2024); new orchestration of Poul Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale for the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; arrangement/ music direction for Dustin Wills’ Anthony Roth Costanzo is The Marriage of Figaro at New York’s Little Island; and composition/ music direction for Jeremy O. Harris’ A Boy’s Company Presents. In 2023, Schlosberg music directed the month-long run of Justin Vivian Bond and Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Only an Octave Apart at the Dublin Fringe Festival, and in 2022 performed as the piano soloist with the New York Philharmonic when the show remounted at Lincoln Center; in 2021, Schlosberg was the audition, rehearsal, and soundtrack pianist for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. As Heartbeat Opera’s music director, Schlosberg has garnered national acclaim for his re-orchestrations of classic operas; as a performer, Schlosberg has collaborated with Angel Blue, Ani Kavafian, Anthony and Demarre McGill, David Shifrin, and the Imani Winds in major US music festivals. Schlosberg is a principal pianist with NOVUS NY, and made his orchestral conducting debut with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2023, leading an all-Maria Callas program.
Schlosberg has received the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards; in 2023, he was nominated for a Drama Desk award for Outstanding Music in a Play for original music for Kate Tarker’s Montag (Soho Rep). Schlosberg‘s work has been described as “mercurial”, “imaginative”, “richly detailed yet delicate” and “flat-out brilliant” by the New York Times; “surprisingly illuminating” and “theatrically effective” by Opera News; and “witty”, “ingenious” by the Wall Street Journal. He received his DMA in Composition from the Yale School of Music, and is currently on the composition faculty at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (summer 2024).
Elina Kalendarova
Philadelphia Orchestra Violinist
Elina Kalendarova, a violinist with the Philadelphia orchestra, is a native of Tashkent (USSR), joined The Philadelphia Orchestra in 2002. She began her violin training with Nathan Mendelson. Later she earned a master’s degree from the Moscow Conservatory where she was a pupil of Igor Bezrodnyi. While doing her post-graduate work, Ms. Kalendarova served as a concertmistress of the Ars Viva Chamber Orchestra. She recorded a CD of chamber music by Taneyev and Glinka for the Le Chant du Monde label.
Since moving to America in 1994, Ms. Kalendarova has performed as a soloist with the Liederkrantz Symphony Orchestra in New York and appeared as a recitalist for the Ascending Artists series. In 1996 she was a recipient of the MetLife Music and Visual Arts Award presented through the New York Association for New Americans.
Before joining The Philadelphia Orchestra, Ms. Kalendarova played with the American Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, and the Pittsburgh Symphony. She is a founding member of the Society Hill String Quintet, comprised of members of The Philadelphia Orchestra.
Dr. Ariane Alexander
NBS Faculty
Dr. Ariane Alexander received her early musical training at the Julliard School of Music studying with Richard Faber and continued her studies at Indiana University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Houston Moores School of Music where she received a DMA degree in piano performance working with Abbey Simon, Horacio Gutierez and Ruth Tomfohrde. Dr. Alexander has performed as soloist and has given master-classes at both the preparatory and collegiate levels throughout the United States and Europe. As collaborative artist and chamber musician she has performed with notable artists including Janos Starker, Yair Kless, Tanya Reminikova, and Sally O’Reilly to name a few. While living in Houston, her students regularly won prizes competing state-wide and at the national level and frequently won scholarships to study at prominent music schools in the United States. Dr. Alexander was the assistant director of the BRAVO! Summer aString and Keyboard Institute at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for 15 years. Now living in Philadelphia, Dr. Alexander continues to concertize and is on faculty at the Nelly Berman School of Music. In the summers, she teaches at the Italy Summer Music Violin Festival in Pienza.