2006 David Tonkonogui Memorial Award Winner

The David Tonkonogui Memorial Award is made to one young musician each year. Through the award, Music of Remembrance recognizes the musical and spiritual values that cellist and teacher David Tonkonogui expressed through his music and his life. The honor includes a cash award of $500 to support continuing musical studies, and an invitation to perform in a highlighted solo at an MOR concert.

This year, the David Tonkonogui Memorial Award was opened to violinists. The winner is 14-year-old Jocelyn Chang, a student of the MOR ensemble's Leonid Keylin. At our May 8 concert, she'll perform Robert Dauber's Serenata (1942, Terezín), a work that Keylin premiered at MOR and which is available on our CD Art from Ashes, Vol. 1. In the essay on the Holocaust she submitted to MOR, Jocelyn discussed two of the artists imprisoned at Terezín, Czech composer Pavel Haas and Austrian composer Viktor Ullmann, whose works MOR performs. She closed with the statement: "I am glad that the United States of America is a free country, where all races and variety of religions are welcomed. Without peace there is no freedom; without freedom, there is no life."

On May 9, our 2005 Tonkonogui Award recipient Julian Schwarz will perform "In Memoriam," a MOR commission by his father, Gerard Schwarz. The moving work, dedicated to the memory of David Tonkonogui, had its premiere at MOR's spring 2005 concert, where it was critically acclaimed.