Congratulations to doctoral student Misael Barraza Díaz, winner of the Sixth Annual David Russell Bach Prize Competition, which took place on February 26 in Holsclaw Hall. The finalists were Andrea Roberto, Andrés Pantoja and Nicholas Epple. As winner, Misael is awarded a custom guitar by German luthier Dennis Tolz.
Grammy Award-winning guitarist David Russell is the sole judge of the four finalists. In May 2014 Maestro Russell was bestowed the Honorary Doctoral Degree from the University of Arizona. About this competition, Russell wrote, “The wonderful music of J.S. Bach is satisfying on all levels: emotionally, intellectually, technically and historically. It has given me so much pleasure and happiness all through my life, that I want to encourage all the students to dedicate some valuable time of their important formative years at the university to studying his music. The competition will be a very good incentive for them to include some of Bach’s works in their repertoire that I hope will give them the same pleasure for their entire lives.”
Past winners of this competition are:
2015 Misael Barraza
2016 Bin Hu
2017 Nicholas Epple
2018 Misael Barraza
2019 Andrés Pantoja