May 27, 2021

We are pleased to announce the judges for our 28th Annual Lapin Competition. The preliminary round will be judged by CMCB faculty Stephanie Lamprea, Daniel Orsen, and Geoffrey Shamu. Students in the 9th grade or under participate in the Junior Division, while those in the 12th grade and under compete in the Senior Division. The final round for the Junior Division will be judged by inti figgis-vizueta, Dr. Makiko Hirata and Olivia J.P. Harris. The final round for the Senior Division will be judged by Chris Jenkins, Nicole DeMaio, and Stanford Thompson.

The finalists’ performances will be broadcast during CMCB’s Fête de la Musique on June 26th. Winners of the 28th Annual Lapin Competition will be announced at that time. The Lapin Competition, named in honor of former CMCB Executive Director David Lapin, is an annual event where solo students will perform their studied instrument and compete for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes.

Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea is an architect of new sounds and expressions as a performer, recitalist, curator and improviser, specializing in contemporary classical repertoire. Trained as an operatic coloratura, Stephanie uses her voice as a mechanism of avant-garde performance art, creating “maniacal shifts of vocal production and character… like an icepick through the skull” (composer Jason Eckardt). Her work has been described as “mercurial” by I Care If You Listen, “dynamic” by critic Steve Smith (Night After Night), and that she “sings so expressively and slowly with ever louder and higher-pitched voice, that the inclined listener [has] shivers down their back and tension flows into the last row.” (Halberstadt.de) She has received awards from St. Botolph Club Foundation, John Cage Orgel Stiftung and Puffin Foundation. Stephanie was a featured TEDx Speaker in TEDxWaltham: Going Places.

Stephanie devours mammoth works of virtuosity and extended techniques with ease and creative insight, singing with an entire spectrum of vocal colors (including operatic style, straight tone, sputters and throat noises). She has performed as a soloist at Roulette, National Sawdust, Shapeshifter Lab, Miller Theater at Columbia University, the Slipper Room, Park Avenue Armory, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Re:Sound Festival. She has worked with Wavefield Ensemble, Ekmeles, Guerrilla Opera, Boston Art Song Society, Verdant Vibes and the Original Gravity Concert Series. In season 2020-21, Stephanie performed as Artist-In-Residence at University of California – Davis, and she presented solo recitals at Roulette Intermedium and Constellation Chicago.

Daniel is the founder and director of Jamaica Plain Chamber Music and performs regularly at international chamber festivals such as Krzyzowa Music, Ravinia, and Verbier. As soloist, he has recently performed with the Pittsburgh Civic Orchestra and Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. As an orchestral leader, he has served as guest solo violist with the Arctic Philharmonic and appears frequently with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Philadelphia Orchestra. 

As a chamber musician, Daniel has performed with luminaries such as Itzhak Perlman, Kim Kashkashian, Eckart Runge, and the Jasper String Quartet. In addition to directing Jamaica Plain Chamber Music, a concert series which brings together the local musical talent in Boston’s Jamaica Plain community, he collaborates frequently with violinist Brandon Garbot as the Orsen-Garbot duo. While studying at New England Conservatory his flute-harp-viola trio, OWL riot, was selected for the Honors Ensemble program. Full festival credits are the Verbier Festival Academy, Kryzyzowa Music, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, IMS Prussia Cove, and the Perlman Music Program. Daniel is also a member of Fermata, an artist roster in Boston committed to presenting chamber music in non-traditional ways and spaces, and Artistic Director of Fermata’s Original Chaplin — a project to commission and perform contemporary sinfonietta scores for Charlie Chaplin short films. In violistic tradition, Daniel has created a few silly arrangements and transcriptions for the instrument, the silliest and most notable being the Fledermaus Fantasy for viola and piano and a five-viola version of Weber’s Andante et Rondo Ungarese.

Daniel is a native of Pittsburgh, PA. He was taught and mentored by members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Credo, and the Perlman Music Program before his studies at the Oberlin Conservatory with Peter Slowik and the New England Conservatory with Kim Kashkashian. He has now begun his own teaching career at the historic Community Music Center of Boston. He graduated from Oberlin with membership in Phi Kappa Lambda, and at NEC had the rare distinction of being a two-time recipient of a Presidential Scholarship. He plays on a 2013 Philip Injeian viola and a 2014 Benoit Rolland bow, both specially made for him.

When the case is closed, Daniel enjoys carpentry, cross-country skiing, and most anything that gets him outside. He is a Steelers fan.

Geoffrey Shamu won a Premier Prix de Trompette at the centralized competition of the Conservatories of the City of Paris (France). He has performed as a soloist at many venues locally, across the country, and in France, both in recital and with such groups as the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Cité, the Ensemble Polyphorum, and the Brass Band de Paris. An active freelance performer, he has appeared with ensembles in New England including the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, the Marsh Chapel Collegium, the Orchestra of Indian Hill, Emmanuel Music, Odyssey Opera, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He is a founding member of Boston’s Riverside Brass.
 
Dr. Shamu enjoys teaching at all levels. Aside from serving on the faculty of the Community Music Center of Boston for nearly twenty years, he has been an instructor at Harvard University, Boston University, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and in the Boston and Newton Public Schools. He has presented master classes in Boston and across the country. His teachers include Terry Everson, Timothy Morrison, and Pierre Thibaud, with whom he studied as a Harriet Hale Woolley Fellow in Paris. Dr. Shamu holds DMA and MM degrees from Boston University, and an AB cum laude in Music from Harvard College.

“[inti’s] music feels sprouted between structures, liberated from certainty and wrought from a language we’d do well to learn” writes the Washington Post. 
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Originally from Washington D.C. and now residing in New York City, inti figgis-vizueta (b. 1993) focuses on close collaborative relationships with a wide range of ensembles and soloists. Her musical practice is physical and visceral, attempting to reconcile historical aesthetics and experimental practices with trans & indigenous futures. The New York Times speaks of her music as “alternatively smooth & serrated”, The Washington Post as “raw, scraping yet soaring”, and the National Sawdust Log as “all turbulence” and “quietly focused”. inti is the 2020 recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Fred Ho Award for “work that defies boundary and genre”.

Recent commissions include works for the Attacca Quartet, JACK Quartet, Crash Ensemble, Music from Copland House Ensemble, & Earspace Ensemble, as well as Jennifer Koh, Matt Haimovitz, & Andrew Yee. Her music has been presented in spaces such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Chicago Symphony Center, Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Louise M. Davis Symphony Hall, and the Dublin National Concert Hall. She is currently in residency at So Percussion’s Brooklyn studio for the ‘21-22 season.

inti is a mentor for the ‘21-22 Luna Composition Lab and returning ‘21 faculty member for the Young Women Composers Camp. inti maintains a busy presentation schedule, with recent talks at McGill University, Manhattan School of Music, Peabody Institute, UC Boulder, and UC Santa Barbara. inti also regularly appears on artist panels including engagements with National Sawdust/Center for Ballet & the Arts @ NYU, University of Kansas, American Composers Forum, and the New Latin Wave Festival. 

inti studied privately with Marcos Balter, George Lewis, Donnacha Dennehy, and Felipe Lara. inti received mentorship from Gavilán Rayna Russom, Du Yun, Angélica Negrón, Tania León, and Amy Beth Kirsten.

inti loves reading poetry, particularly Danez Smith and Joy Harjo. inti honors her Quechua bisabuela, who was the only woman butcher on the whole plaza centraland used to fight men with a machete.​

An international pianist and a recording artist with ten albums under her belt, Makiko Hirata is “Dr. Pianist,” on a mission to promote the power of music to heal and unite us. She collaborates with neuroscientists to quantify the benefit of music and promote music as an overlooked social resource through speaking engagements, workshops and writing. She is a US-Japan Leadership Program Fellow. 

Dr. Hirata has given recitals, lectures, concerto performances and outreach concerts in the Americas and Eurasia with ensembles and artists, such as the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, the Pecs Hungarian Symphony Orchestra, conductor Leon Fleisher, and clarinetist David Krakauer. As a teacher, she has taught at New York University, Colburn Conservatory of Music, Rice University, and Lone Star College, and given master classes and lectures internationally.   Dr. Hirata is a Shigeru Kawai Artist. 

More on Dr. Hirata is at: http://musicalmakiko.com/en/ https://www.youtube.com/c/MakikoHirata 

Cellist, improviser, and activist Olivia J. P. Harris is an artist dedicated to contemporary music and experimental sound art with a strong commitment to using music as a vehicle for social commentary and progress. In addition to being an active soloist, Oli is a founding member of Mazumal, a voice and cello duo committed to innovative performance that promotes inclusivity through socially conscious programming and educational outreach. Through their work with their chamber projects and in their solo engagements, Oli has worked to use their platform to address social and political topics, recently leading a panel entitled “Appropriation, Tokenization, and Allyship in Contemporary Music” during Mazumal’s residency at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and appearing on series such as Music for Missions in Western Massachusetts. Oli has performed in concert halls in the US and Europe from Cleveland’s Severance Hall to the Konzerthaus Berlin. They are enthusiastic about collaborating across genres and mediums and has played alongside dancers, visual artists, actors, and singer-songwriters, including regular collaborations with their brother, writer Bernard E. P. Harris.  

Oli began her studies in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. They are a graduate of Cleveland Institute of Music Prep, holds a Bachelor in Music Performance from The Hartt School, a Professional Performer’s Certificate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a masters in Contemporary Performance at Boston Conservatory at Berklee where they studied with Rhonda Rider. Other principal instructors include Astrid Schween, Jeffrey Zeigler, Mihai Tetel, Regina Mushabac, and Martha Baldwin.

Chris Jenkins, Associate Dean for Academic Support at Oberlin Conservatory, is an educator, administrator, and performing violist. At Oberlin, he is a Deputy Title IX Coordinator and Conservatory Liaison to the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. He is currently earning a DMA in viola performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and a PhD in musicology from Case Western Reserve University concurrently, where his work focuses on the music of African-American composers.  Through a Curriculum Diversification Grant from the American Society for Aesthetics, in 2017 Mr. Jenkins published an annotated bibliography of works pertaining to African-American participation in the field of classical music, and he presents frequently on issues of diversity within classical music.  

In 2011, Mr. Jenkins earned a master’s degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and he has also worked with the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy on projects related to countering violent extremism and counterterrorism, as well as with CWRU’s Yemen Accountability Project, which documents potential human rights violations in Yemen. His international engagement has included performances and teaching in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Israel, China, Colombia, and South Africa, including a performance with the Jordan National Symphony at the World Heritage Site of Petra in 2016. In the summer of 2017, he served as a guest artist and teacher at the Afghan National Institute of Music in Kabul, Afghanistan. His teachers have included Lynne Ramsey, Michael Tree, Martha Katz, Karen Dreyfus, Karen Ritscher, Michelle LaCourse, and Carol Rodland. His alma maters include Harvard University, Columbia University, New England Conservatory, and the Manhattan School of Music.

Nicole DeMaio is a Jersey City-based musician, composer, music educator, and arts administrator. 
 
Nicole is an active composer and songwriter, creating music in a multitude of genres. Her piece “Solo for Bassoon Alone” was selected as repertoire for the 2021 Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition, and she has won the “Fifteen Minutes of Fame” and “Pictures” composition competitions. Infrasound, Yale University, The Rivers School, and numerous soloists have all commissioned her work. Nicole served as the composer and music director for “The Penelopiad,” a full-length musical awarded an Entrepreneurial Grant by The Boston Conservatory. Her single “Where I Was” was released in March 2020 and has been featured in video works by Cardboard Stage and Caroline Bagenal. Her first full album is forthcoming. 
 
As a performer, Nicole specializes on flute, clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon. In January of 2021, she performed with The Broadway Sinfonietta, an all female-identifying, majority women-of-color orchestral collective, to record “Ratatouille: The Tiktok Musical.” With a cast that included Tituss Burgess, Andrew Barth Feldman, and others performing music written by creators on the app Tiktok, the show debuted virtually as a fundraiser for The Actor’s Fund. Previously, Nicole was a member of the orchestra for the 2020 National Tour of “An American in Paris” and played in the pit for several seasons at Surflight Theatre in New Jersey. Outside of musical theatre, Nicole can often be found freelancing with various orchestras, jazz bands, and chamber ensembles. She also performs with clarinetist Bradley Frizzell as Resona Duo at various venues and private events.
 
Throughout her career, Nicole has taught both private lessons and in classrooms. She most recently taught 7th to 12th grade at Boston College High School, where she created new courses such as Music Makers, a class focusing on music technology, science, and instrument building.
 
Nicole is one of the founders and current Director of Black Sheep Contemporary Ensemble. BSCE focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration, commissioning and performing new works, and educating audiences about contemporary music. The group has been featured in The Boston Globe and has been awarded numerous grants for their endeavors. In the past, Nicole worked as Boston Civic Symphony’s Operations Manager and Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra’s Operations Assistant. She has also earned multiple certifications in grant writing and non-profit management.
 
Nicole graduated with a Master in Music degree in Composition from The Boston Conservatory where she studied with Marti Epstein and John Murphree, and clarinet with Michael Norsworthy. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from Montclair State University where she double-majored in Music Education and Music Theory & Composition. She studied clarinet with Dennis Smylie and David Singer, and composition with Joshua Groffman, Scott Richards, and Patrick Burns. Currently, Nicole is enrolled in the Master in Music degree in Multiple Woodwind Performance at New Jersey City University where she studies flute, clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon with Mark Thrasher and Andrea Herr.

Stanford Thompson is a musician and educator who serves as the Founder and Executive Director of Play On Philly and founding member of El Sistema USA and the National Instrumentalist Mentoring and Advancement Network. Recognized as a TED Fellow, Stanford believes that music education is a powerful tool for positive personal and community change. Mr. Thompson serves on the faculty of the Global Leaders Program and regularly presents at major universities and music conservatories about leadership, entrepreneurship and social justice. As a consultant, he has guided the development of dozens of music programs across the United States and collaborated with major orchestras, higher education institutions, and arts organizations to develop new strategies and initiatives that help provide equitable access to the arts. As a professional trumpeter, Stanford has performed as a soloist and member with major orchestras around the world and continues to perform throughout the Philadelphia region. Stanford is a native of Atlanta, GA, a graduate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Talent Development Program and holds degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music and the New England Conservatory’s Sistema Fellows Program.