Young Award Winners Concert

When Fredda Hyman created Music in the Loft in 1992, she had a clear mission: to unearth the city’s most promising new musicians. The program has given us Rachel Barton Pine and the Pacifica Quartet, to name just two. This season, nascent talents such as hotshot 18-year-old cellist Gabriel Cabezas fill the acoustically top-notch room with works by violinist-pianist Conrad Tao, the current MITL composer in residence whose youthful imagination (he’s 15!) gives edge to his traditionally inspired chamber output.

This Young Award Winners double bill piles on the precocious virtuosos, including multiple piano-competition winner Emma Michalak, a member of the Music Institute of Chicago’s Academy Program, where tweens and teens earn their chops before heading to college. The 17-year-old—who formed a duo, Les Euterpes, with her violinist BFF, Tabitha Oh—said her dream is to perform at Carnegie Hall. The local Latin School student tinkles the ivories for a variety of pieces by Chopin, Mendelssohn, Debussy and Prokofiev.

In the Emerald String Quartet, four dapper peers of Michalak’s in MIC’s acclaimed program are another force. Venezuelan violinist Kenneth Jones-Madrid, 18, performed in various South American capitals by the age of nine, and violinist Clayton Penrose-Whitmore, 16, beat Michalak to Carnegie’s stage. Most high-school sophomores are happy to get a gold star on a pop quiz. Penrose-Whitmore had The New York Times singing his praises for his performance of a Vivaldi Concerto. College admissions shouldn’t be a problem.

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