Robert and Ellen Silverman – two much respect pianists and professors – started their namesake piano competition at UBC to support and develop up-and-coming serious pianists.

As Robert says: “Professionally, if any pianist is going to ‘make it,’ playing a concerto and knowing how to do it is very important.  There are only so many opportunities to play with the orchestra. So Ellen and I thought, what can we do that would be good for the students and a good feature for the school?”

It’s a competition that is open to all UBC School of Music students. Now, in 2022, the competition is down to its three brilliant finalists: Aslan Aslanov, Angela Mok, and Jaeden Izik-Dzurko. We’ve been lucky enough to hear one of these talents play live – Aslanov – and look forward to hearing the others.

This Final Round of the Silverman competition will take place at Vancouver’s Chan Centre with Jonathan Girard conducting the UBC Chamber Orchestra. All finalists will play full concertos: