A Coquitlam pianist is competing next month for the chance to win $8,000 and perform with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
Hamilton Lau, who is currently studying with Corey Hamm at UBC, is up against five other contestants in the 2022 Shean Piano Competition.
The event takes place on May 20 and 21 in Muttart Hall at MacEwan University, where Lau is set to perform last on both days.
On May 20 at 8:30 p.m., Lau is scheduled to play "Piano Sonata No. 18 in D Major, K. 576" by Mozart; "Étude No. 6 in D Minor" by Hamelin; "Du und Du" by von Dohnányi; and "Piano Sonata in B Minor" by Liszt.
He'll follow up the next night with a rendition of "Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 1" by Rachmaninoff.
According to a release, Lau started playing piano at the age of four and, in 2015, earned the British Columbia Registered Music Teachers’ Association Excellence Award.
The next year, he won his associate diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music in piano performance.
From 2016 to 2020, he was enrolled in the Young Artist Collegiate Program at the Vancouver Academy of Music, where he studied piano, theory, history and composition.
Lau took first prize at the Canadian Music Competition last year and in 2019, and at the Performing Arts BC Provincial Festival in 2018 — the same year, he played Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor as a soloist at the Orpheum Theatre with the VAM Symphony Orchestra.
For the Shean Piano Competition, Lau is up against Jaeden Izik-Dzurko of Salmon Arm, who is also a UBC student of Hamm’s; Helen Pei of Richmond; Paul Williamson of Mission; Michelle Jia Yun Xu of Vancouver; and Jessica Yuma of Edmonton.
They'll face a panel of judges that includes David Hoyt, Jane Coop and Janet Scott-Hoyt.
