Awards for Young Musicians

Giving talent a chance

AYM’s Martin James Bartlett wins BBC Young Musician of the Year

One of our long-term Award winners, Martin James Bartlett, took the ultimate accolade by winning the extremely prestigious BBC Young Musician of the Year 2014 competition. Congratulations to Martin and his parents! This was Martin’s second time in the finals – he was one of the last three for the competition two years ago too.

AYM’s help is often the ‘bread and butter’ and sometimes the critical bit of funding but this can get overlooked as our aim is to offer an Award for each year that a young person makes good progress. Our support is for the long haul. In fact, AYM has supported Martin for about eight years, with the majority of funding to help with his fees at the Royal College of Music. However musicians also need music, so we’ve also helped Martin to buy a vast amount of sheet music! All put to good use – just look at Martin’s website and see his amazing repertoire of more than 70 pieces, which he offers at recital standard, including six major Piano Concertos.

We were thrilled that four of the young musicians we have supported over a number of years were in the category finals of BBC Young Musician 2014. With only 5 performers per category this is a stunning achievement.

In addition to Martin, our category finalists were: Julian Trevelyan, at 15 the youngest finalist in his category, a pianist who continues to stun with his technical prowess; Julianna Myslov, who has been playing the harp since she was 5; and Jess Gillam who plays Saxophone and who won a special BBC 2014 Award as a ‘most promising young musician’.

Part of what AYM adds to our Awards programme is to connect the musicians to each other and to help them grow in confidence. We are especially thrilled to have had award winners in the finals of this really tough competition.  Congratulations and well done!

 

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