Five Students Earn Symphony Solos
	Matt Hoch’s first love was the saxophone, but it’s his voice that is gaining him fame. Hoch, a senior voice major from Reading, Pennsylvania, is one of five students to win this year’s School of Music concerto competition. The prize: an opportunity to perform in front of a packed house with the College’s symphony orchestra. "I’m thrilled," says Hoch, who dropped his saxophone major in his sophomore year to study voice. "It’s a terrific honor. I’m a little bit nervous, but I guess more excited than anything else." Hoch, violinist Sandra Lascarro ’02, baritone William Murray ’98, pianist Siew Lan Sung ’98, and trombonist Kate Donnelly ’00, will offer solo performances with the orchestra during the Saturday, February 28, concert in Ford Hall Auditorium. Free and open to the public, the concert is to begin at 8:15 p.m. Open to any student in the School of Music, the annual competition begins in November, when participants submit to orchestra conductor Grant Cooper the titles of works they would perform for the competition. Preliminary rounds during the first three days of the spring semester brought some 50 entrants to Ford Hall, where a panel of faculty judges evaluated contestants in brass, percussion, woodwinds, piano, voice, and string categories. That number had been whittled to 21 when the final round of competition began January 24, and Hoch, who made it as far as the finals last year, was up against six other vocalists. This time, both he and Murray gave winning performances. "I played sax and was in a lot of bands in high school, and I really just sang for fun," says Hoch, who switched majors to broaden his career opportunities. "I feel very lucky. This is a great opportunity to perform with the orchestra for the first time, and the positive reinforcement doesn’t hurt, either." The audience, which he expects to include his parents, will hear him sing Ravel’s "Don Quichotte á dulcinée."