Daunting schedule for cellist

LESS than a week after winning the 2011 Gisborne International Music Competition, cellist Santiago Canon Valencia last night played in the preliminary round of yet another prestigious contest.
The 16-year-old Colombian won’t know until tonight whether he has got into the semi-finals of the Christchurch-based National Concerto Competition.
However, one music insider said it would take “some considerable upset” for him not to go right through to the final, which will be held in March next year with accompaniment from the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra.
The competition — which Valencia said he hoped would go as well as the Gisborne one for him — is just one event on the prodigiously talented musician’s calendar.
Just hours after accepting his $8000 prize at the Gisborne competition last Saturday night, he recounted a daunting schedule that included the Christchurch competition, followed by recitals in Hamilton (where he is studying in the Soloist Stream at the University of Waikato) and Rotorua.
And before heading home to Colombia for a holiday he planned to finish the recording of his debut album, which will be made up of works for solo cello of the 20th century by composers including Gaspar Cassado i Moreu (Spain), Gyorgy Sandor Ligeti, (Hungary) and Zoltan Kodaly (Hungary).
It all sounds like the start of a glitter-ing career for the young artist who, having completed his high school studies in his home country at the age of 14, will be just 17 when he finishes his degree next year.
But even as the world beckons, he said he had long wanted to take part in the Gisborne contest, where the jurors said he had “alarmed us with his consummate ease around his instrument and his sheer technical ability”.
“I had seen all the posters and the flyers and had wanted to enter it since I first started coming to New Zealand (three years ago),” he told Concert FM after his win.
So when he reached the qualifying age of 16, he decided he “had to do it”.
“It turned out to be a really, really nice experience. Gisborne is such a lovely place . . . the whole environment, the billets I had were great people.”
Meeting up with new people including the 55 other entrants from around New Zealand and the world was a highlight, he added.
“And the fact that I won first prize is really good.
“The Gisborne competition’s reputation has been growing so much that winning it means a great deal . . . this is a competition that in the future is going to be way bigger than it already is.”