Brooklynn Thatcher
Photos by thefrenchguyphotography
Brooklynn Thatcher, a sixteen-year-old violinist from Elgin, South Carolina, won the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra’s 2025 Youth Concerto Competition. An eleventh-grade home-schooled student who flies regularly to Utah to study with Eugene Watanabe at the Gifted Music School in Salt Lake City, Thatcher captured first prize performing the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35. The top prize includes a $1,500 cash award plus the opportunity to perform with the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra and Maestro John Morris Russell during the 2025-2026 season.
Second prize was awarded to violinist Mana Takahashi, age seventeen from Tampa, Florida,while third prize was awarded to eighteen-year-old double bassist Michael Stratford from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A Special Achievement Award was presented to fourteen-year-old cellist Charlie Wyatt from Blacksburg, Virginia, who received a special $750 scholarship to the Philadelphia International Music Festival (PIMF). (All finalists received a PIMF scholarshipof at least $300.) A total of nine competitors performed in the finals of the competition on Saturday, January 25, 2025, which was livestreamed from St. Luke’s Anglican Church on Hilton Head Island. These outstanding solo string players were selected from over 40 total applicants from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The other finalists were violinists Lauren Yejin Kang (14; Vestavia Hills, AL), Carley Newman (16;Trussville, AL), Stephanie Suedbeck (16; Greenville, NC), and cellists Seogyeom Kim (17; Fortson, GA), and Seunghoon (Ryan) Pi (16; Suwanee, GA).
Michael Stratford, Mana Takahashi, Brooklyn Thatcher & Steve Shaiman
Finals judges for the 2025 competition were HHSO Concertmaster Micah Gangwer, HHSO Principal Violist Lizhou Liu, and HHSO Cellist Adrian Kremer. Pianist Keru Zhang Fleetwood accompanied all nine competitors during their final round performances.
Produced annually since 2008 by the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, the Youth Concerto Competition (YCC) is one of the largest and most prestigious competitions in the Southeastern United States. The competition is restricted to young string students (under 19) living in elevenstates—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia and West Virginia—because of limited performance solo opportunities in this region. Past YCC winners and finalists have gone on to earn degrees at the nation’s top music schools, including Juilliard, Curtis, Peabody, New England Conservatory, Oberlin, Eastman, Cleveland Institute of Music, Yale, Colburn, and Vanderbilt, as well as the Royal Conservatory in Toronto.
“Over the years, we have provided solo opportunities for more than 150 young musicians,”stated Hilton Head International Piano Competition and Education and Community Engagement Director, Steve Shaiman. “These talented students gain invaluable experience as a YCC finalist, since most of them aspire to be professional musicians, and our competition helps prepare them for college auditions and other competitions. Many of our past finalists now enjoy thriving professional careers, and we are proud to support and nurture these young artists of the future.”
A link to all performance videos from the 2025 Youth Concerto Competition livestream follows:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmno8I0cg41p9p0m8dlWNNzPM6nddSwoF
