Yamaha Education News

Yamaha Birmingham Accompanist competition 2009 announces winner

Pictured here: Yshani Perinpanayagam (right), receiving the winner's cheque of £1,500 from Yamaha's education liaison manager, Bill C Martin (centre), with world-renowned piano accompanist and judge of the 2009 YBAYA competion, Roger Vignoles.

The winner of the 2009 Yamaha Birmingham Accompanist of the Year Award (YBAYA), organised by Birmingham City University and Yamaha Music UK, is Yshani Perinpanayagam, who fought off the three other superb piano accompanists at the finals at Birmingham Conservatoire's Adrian Boult Hall on 22 November to win a cash prize of £1,500, donated by Yamaha, and the chance to give a recital.

Yshani undertook her junior and senior studies at the Royal College of Music, with exchange studies in Prague. She has given performances as a soloist, orchestral pianist and chamber musician, including broadcasts for radio and television. She is currently studying for a masters of music degree at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

The YBAYA competition - a strong partnership between Yamaha and Birmingham Conservatoire - takes place every two years and is still one of only a few awards celebrating professional piano accompanists. Judged over the years by some of the most accomplished professional musicians working today, for this 10th competition YBAYA welcomed back its distinguished inaugural adjudicator Roger Vignoles.

In the final event each of the four accompanists gave a 60-minute recital: 30 minutes accompanying a singer and 30 accompanying an instrumental performer. While the best accompanists and soloists work very much as a team, even top accompanists are often - and arguably unfairly - seen in merely a supporting role. But in truth the two musicians work in close partnership, very much as a pair of dancers do. Roger Vignoles draws a parallel between the piano accompanist and dancer Fred Asaire's dancing partner, Ginger Rogers, who said of her role that she had to do everything that Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels!

The singers and instrumentalists who performed on stage with the accompanists at the finals must have felt rather odd, knowing that, for once, the attention was not always on them but on the accompanist. But as an audience member, I found listening more closely to the accompaniment gave new insights into familiar and less familiar repertoire, that we were treated to. It was a complete musical delight which clearly demonstrated the skill and power of each pair of performers.

Probably very few outstanding young pianists really set out to become an accompanist. The pull of the soloist's art always seems that much more exciting to a budding pianist. Yet there is something very special about witnessing accompanists of this calibre, who care very much about the role they are playing and believe that they are on a life-long journey to improve their skills, to make the experience of the listener better and better. We would certainly urge young pianists considering studying piano at a conservatoire to explore the accompanists' courses, offered by the likes of Birmingham Conservatoire.

The 2009 runners up were Nana Hizumi (Japan), Amy de Sybel (UK) and Jonathan Fisher (UK).

by Bill C Martin

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(posted: December 2009)