Shenandoah Pianist Wins SOLA Scholarship

Posted Apr 06, 2022 | ASO News, Press Releases, 

Alexandria, VA—The Symphony Orchestra League of Alexandria (SOLA) has awarded the 2022 Mary Graham Lasley Scholarship to Noah Hardaway, a graduate student of piano performance at Shenandoah University in Winchester.

Hardaway performed Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26 by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev before judges and audience at the Performing Arts Center on the campus of the Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, VA. The $2,500 scholarship was one of three awarded in the competition on March 20, 2022.

Bailey Hobbs, a sophomore piano student at American University in Washington, D.C., won the second-place award of $2,000 for his performance of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor.

Cellist Logan Madrid, a student at Northern Virginia Community College, performed Élégie, Op. 24 by French composer Gabriel Fauré and won a $1,500 scholarship to continue his studies.

SOLA has conducted the scholarship competition for over 40 years. The scholarships and compensation for three academic music judges are funded through a trust fund established in the 1980s in memory of Mary Graham Lasley, an active supporter of the Alexandria Symphony.

The 2020 and 2021 competitions were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous scholarship winners have competed from East Coast and midwestern music departments, including the University of Maryland, the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the Juilliard School, George Mason University, James Madison University, and the University of North Carolina.

“SOLA is very proud of the success of the MGL scholarship, which is very well regarded and well known in music departments at colleges in the East and Midwest,” says the chair of the competition, Sharon Walker. MGL contestants must be from Virginia, Maryland or the District of Virginia. Several winners have performed with the Alexandria Symphony.

SOLA announces the Mary Graham Lasley Competition date at the start of the fall academic year and makes the application forms available online after December 1 on the ASO website.