The Ruth P. Cogen Competition was established by the Board of Trustees of Levine Music in 1983 to honor Ruth Cogen, one of the school’s founders and its first chair of the Board of Trustees.
The 2025 Competition took place on Sunday, February 9, 2025. Each participant prepared one movement from a concerto or solo piece intended for performance with an orchestra for the preliminary round. Students in the final round performed with piano accompaniment. One grand prize winner was chosen from all the first-place division winners to play in an upcoming performance accompanied by an orchestra.
Congratulations to all the participants, their teachers, and their families!
Awards
Congratulations to all the finalists and their extraordinary teachers!
Combined Junior Division
First place: Chloe Chu (violin student of Virgilio Joven)
Second place: Faith Reyes (piano student of Amanda Halstead)
Honorable Mention: Tenley Fitzsimmons (piano student of Melinda Baird)
Honorable Mention: Ronin Wong with Vienne Wong (cello students of Henry Stubbs)
Piano Intermediate Division
First place: Minjae Jeon (piano student of Jinha Park)
Second place: Kasra Tavakoli (piano student of Kim Yi)
Honorable mention: Shivaj Raman (piano student of Cecilia Cho)
Instrumental Intermediate Division
First place: Philip Thankachan, (violin student of Susan Katsarelis)
Second place: Felix Karacsony-Major (clarinet student of Claire Eichhorn)
Honorable mention: Chloe Robertson (bassoon student of Jimmy Ren)
Honorable mention: Aden Garland (violin student of Leo Sushansky)
Piano Senior Division
First place: Anne Valerie Ter* (piano student of Darya Gabay)
Second place: Davanee Li (student of Wen-Yin Chan)
Instrumental Senior Division
First place: Andrew Chi* (cello student of Vasily Popov)
First place: Noah Wilkins (saxophone student of Dimitrios Kostaras)
Second place: Benjamin Whiting-Eisemann (viola student of Patrick LeStrange)
Honorable mention: Philip Weeks (viola student of William Hurd)
*Grand Prize Winners
Special thanks to: Aaron Percy, Recording Engineer; Maxfield Wollam-Fisher, competition organizer; Darya Gabay and Irina Kats, collaborative pianists; Marian Hahn, Nikita Fitenko, Julietta Curenton, and June Huang, competition judges; and Levine campus staff.
This program has been made possible through the generous support of the Marinus and Minna B. Koster Foundation, Inc.