Add to the list of things Covid-19 has put on hold the old “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” joke. Even “practice, practice, practice” — ironically, an activity well-suited to lockdown — won’t enable you to perform there anytime soon.

So when the competition that takes its name from that joke holds its final round this Tuesday, it won’t be at the famous venue’s Weill Recital Hall like last year. Sad as that is, it ushers in an exciting change: the whole world can watch — and vote for the winner. 

The Getting to Carnegie competition, now in its seventh year, will livestream its final on January 12 at 5:00 PM EST on The Violin Channel Facebook page to a virtual concert hall bigger — that page has more than 370,000 fans — and more global than the real thing.

The competition rotates annually among violin, cello, and voice. This year’s finalists are violinists Maria Dueñas, 18, from Spain; Sory Park, 20, from South Korea; Angela Chan, 23, from Hong Kong; and Sophia Stoyanovish, 24, from the United States.

Getting to Carnegie is the brainchild of pianist/composer Julian Gargiulo, aka Pianist With The Hair, whose mission, as the self-mocking moniker suggests, is to make classical music “relevant and fun” for younger generations. An Italian who lives in New York and Paris, Gargiulo has been a Steinway Artist since 2014 and has performed at the United Nations, Moscow Conservatory Hall, and Sydney’s Seymour Theatre. He mixes this musical and technical excellence with informality and Seinfeldesque wit to captivate audiences.

For this year’s final Gargiulo has written a four-movement violin sonata, his Violin Sonata No. 4. Each finalist was randomly assigned one movement and received a recording of Gargiulo playing the piano part. Each then recorded a video of themselves playing the violin part to the recording. The two were then edited together into one split-screen video. These videos are what the audience will see tomorrow, along with Gargiulo’s entertaining commentary and interviews of the finalists.

“Just imagine a cross between Saturday Night Live and America’s Got Talent,” Gargiulo said.

Unlike traditional competitions, Getting to Carnegie lets the audience help choose the winner. This year fifty percent of the vote will come from the online audience via digital voting, and the other fifty percent will come from a jury of professional musicians comprised of the past six winners — Emily Helenbrook, voice; Chae won Hong, cello; Haeji Kim, violin; Nathan Meltzer, violin; Brianna Robinson, voice; and Rachel Siu, cello — plus violinist Dmitri Berlinsky. Audience voting will be open for 48 hours; the winner will be announced on January 14 at 5:00 PM EST on The Violin Channel’s Facebook page.

Each finalist will receive $1,000, and the winner will receive an additional $4,000 and will be the featured violinist at Water Island Music Festival, in January 2022 in the U.S. Virgin Islands (a nice location for a winter gig). They will also perform Gargiulo’s complete sonata at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall at the 2022 Getting to Carnegie finals, assuming concerts have resumed by then.

Getting to Carnegie began seven years ago, when Gargiulo had an idea for a new kind of competition. He invited musicians from conservatories worldwide to compete for a place on stage with him on a Carnegie Hall stage. Anyone could enter, free of charge. All they had to do was send a short video of themselves performing. Four chosen finalists would join him on stage to perform a movement of a newly composed work by Gargiulo. The audience would vote for a winner, who would travel with Julian and other internationally acclaimed musicians to perform at the Water Island Music Festival. Gargiulo, tongue in cheek and ever keen to make classical music relate to the general culture, called it “the Hunger Games of classical music.”

Six sold-out finals later, Getting to Carnegie is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and counts among its supporters pianist Emanuel Ax, former Poet Laureate Billy Collins, and Susan and Charles Fisher. 

The competition’s innovative democratic format makes it more engaging and fun, with no dilution of musical excellence, if past winners’ careers are any guide. Last year’s winner, soprano Brianna Robinson, is a Jane & Steven Akin Emerging Artist at Boston Lyric Opera. 

Australian cellist Rachel Siu won in 2019, and later that year was a joint winner in the senior category at the David Popper International Cello Competition in Várpalota, Hungary. Siu is studying for her masters with Joel Krosnick at Juilliard, where she is a Kovner Fellow.

Korean cellist Chae won Hong, the 2016 winner, went on to become the 3rd prize winner in the 2018 Aram Khachaturian International Competition, where she also won the Audience prize and the Beethoven Prize, awarded by composer Krzysztof Penderecki. She has performed several times at the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw, Poland.

Violinist Nathan Meltzer, who won in 2018, received the 2020 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and is the youngest-ever winner of the Windsor Festival International String Competition. A Violin Channel Young Artist, Meltzer recently released his debut CD, about which Gramophone wrote, “Wonderful playing, supremely polished, ... a stunning album.” He performs on the “Ames, Totenberg” Stradivari, having been chosen by the family of its previous owner, Roman Totenberg, after the instrument reappeared in 2015, 50 years after being stolen. The story made international headlines.

Which of this year’s finalists will join them as winners of this unique competition? Gargiulo invites you to tune in tomorrow and cast your vote: “The great thing about the competition being 100 percent online is that more people than ever will be Getting to Carnegie this year!”

Details

Date: Tuesday, January 12

Time: 5:00 PM EST

Where: The Violin Channel and Getting to Carnegie Facebook pages

Register to vote: The Violin Channel

Winner announced: January 14 at 5:00 PM EST on The Violin Channel and Getting to Carnegie Facebook pages

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