Guest artist Marina Lomazov highlights David D. Dubois Piano Competition

Aspiring young pianists and audiences will find inspiration in Marina Lomazov, this year's guest artist for the eighth annual David D. Dubois Piano Competition. Hosted by the College of Musical Arts, this year's event features 23 accomplished high school pianists competing for prizes and having a master class with Lomazov.

As part of the competition events, Lomazov will present a solo piano recital at 8 p.m. Feb. 2 in Bryan Recital Hall at the Moore Musical Arts Center. Advance tickets for her performance are $7 for adults and $3 for children and non-BGSU students. All tickets are $10 on the day of the performance. Students with a BGSU ID are admitted free. Tickets are available online.

The Ukrainian-American pianist, a Steinway Artist, is one of the most passionate and charismatic performers on the concert scene today. A professor of piano at the Eastman School of Music, she was for 17 years the Ira McKissick Koger Professor of Fine Arts at the University of South Carolina School of Music, where she founded and served as artistic director of the Southeastern Piano Festival.

Before immigrating to the United States in 1990, Lomazov studied at the Kiev Conservatory where she became the youngest First Prize Winner at the all-Kiev Piano Competition. She holds degrees from the Juilliard School and Eastman, the latter bestowing upon her the highly coveted Artist's Certificate – an honor the institution had not given a pianist for nearly two decades. She has performed across the United States and internationally, both as a soloist and chamber musician.

The competition semi-finals will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 2. The finals will be held from 8:30 a.m. to noon Feb. 3, both in Kobacker Hall at the Moore Musical Arts Center.

Dr. David D. Dubois, an internationally recognized consultant, author and speaker, had a love of music and a special passion for piano and organ performance. In 2008, after reviewing proposals from major music schools from around the nation, the David D. Dubois Trust established the David D. Dubois Piano Competition at Bowling Green State University to enhance the piano program in the College of Musical Arts.

The piano competition supports student pianists at several levels. It provides a number of scholarship opportunities for high school students to attend BGSU, encourages undergraduate piano students to develop innovative programming ideas for outreach projects, and supports current piano students to participate in music festivals around the world.