The Crescendo Music Awards Competition was founded by Rotarian Joseph A. Bias in the spring of 1999 with a budget of $1,500 from the Rotary Club of Tulsa. In that first year, eleven High School and College students auditioned for a jury of six Rotarians. Three were called back to perform for the entire club and cash prizes were awarded. Now in its 14th season, over 780 students have auditioned and more than $320,000 have been awarded as cash prizes to some extremely talented young musicians.
In addition to the almost $35,000 awarded each year in the 2005-2007 competitions, Dr. Esther Jane Hardenbergh, Assistant Professor of Voice at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami, awarded a scholarship to the University of Miami’s summer program for vocalists and pianists in Salzburg, Austria to Peter Hamilton an outstanding Bass/Baritone from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005, Brett Payne, Tenor from the University of Oklahoma in 2006 and Juan Galvan, Tenor, winner of the vocal competition in 2007 from the University of North Texas.
Continuing the tradition, through our distinguished panel of judges, scholarships for summer study in Germany and Italy have been offered to our winning competitors.
The competition is annually open in three divisions; Voice, Piano and in alternating years, Strings or Brass & Woodwinds. The 2012 competition is open at the college level for Voice, Piano and Strings; and open at the high school level for Voice, Piano and Orchestral Instruments.
Through a generous ongoing gift from Marilyn Inhofe Davis, in memory of her sister, Joan Inhofe Johnson, we have been able to annually award an additional $2500 cash prize to our People’s Choice Award Winner, chosen exclusively by the live audience attending the Collegiate Division Finals concert.
The competition will celebrate its 15th Anniversary in 2012 – 2013 with a series of gala concert events in the Tulsa area.
Please encourage outstanding students to compete. We look forward to their participation.
Rotary Club of Tulsa’s Foundation
The Crescendo Music Awards program is a function of the Rotary Club of Tulsa, the 9th largest of 33,000 Rotary Clubs worldwide. Our active membership serves on 46 committees, supporting worthwhile projects such as our Nicaragua Water Well Project, International Wheel Chair Project, Polio Plus (a worldwide Rotary endeavor to eradicate polio and its effects), International Youth Exchange, Camp Enterprise, Adopt-A-School, and others.
Through the generosity of its members, the Rotary Club of Tulsa’s Foundation has grown to over $2 million, with earnings from that fund supporting a multitude of community projects in the Greater Tulsa area with the major portion of its funding coming from our annual premier Club event, the IBA Awards Banquet.