October 24, 2006 | Students

Music Senior Wins Top Prize in Trumpet Competition

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern University School of Music student Ethan Bensdorf has won First Prize in the 2006 Armando Ghitalla Trumpet Competition, a national competition sponsored by the Armando Ghitalla Foundation. Bensdorf was selected out of a field of more than 100 competitors.

The prize includes a cash award of $7,500 -- one of the largest available to trumpeters -- and a guest artist appearance with the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra in Massachusetts on Oct. 27. During that program he will be featured in Hummel's Trumpet Concerto and in Vivaldi's Double Trumpet Concerto in collaboration with Empire Brass trumpeter Rolf Smedvig.

The Armando Ghitalla Foundation was founded by Ghitalla to develop activities that encourage aspiring trumpet students. A celebrated teacher, he was one of America's most distinguished trumpeters, spending more than 28 years with the Boston Symphony, 15 of them as principal trumpet.

Bensdorf is a senior at Northwestern University School of Music where he studies with Barbara Butler, Charles Geyer and Christopher Martin. Bensdorf has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, performing as principal trumpeter under James Levine and was for two years a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the training orchestra for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

He also has participated in the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, the National Orchestral Institute in Maryland and for seven years at the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp in Michigan. He was a semifinalist at the 2003 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and is a founding member of the Panoramic Brass Quintet. In 2005, Bensdorf was one of four students selected by Northwestern University to perform at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.

Bensdorf graduated from Evanston Township High School in 2003.