A 14-year-old musician who lives in Oso, Sarah Hall was named in January the region’s finalist in the Music Teacher’s National Association junior string competition. To reach this level she won the top prize in both the MTNA Washington State Junior String Competition in November and the MTNA 6 Western States Regional Competition.
She won playing a 20-minute program comprised of three pieces: Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor, “Fugue” movement; the “Romance” movement of Concerto No. 2 in D minor by Wieniawski; and “Tzigane” by Ravel.
Now she is offering a public concert with those and more music at Atonement Free Lutheran Church, 6905 172nd St. in Arlington starting at 4 p.m., March 1, as a benefit to help pay her way to national competition. Admission is free but donations will be accepted.
A home-school student, Hall has studied violin since age 4 and piano since she was 6, said her mother, Carla Hall. She is currently studying violin with Ronald Patterson, a teacher at University of Washington. She studies piano with Tonya Siderius and is in her third year of a pre-college program of the Academy of Music Northwest.
“She thinks it’s funny to see how excited everyone gets,” her mother said.
“Gramma gets more excited than me,” Sarah said.
This is not the first award that Hall has won.
In 2006 at age 10, she won the SCMTA Concerto Competition and performed Mozart Concerto No. 4 in D Major with the Port Gardner Bay Chamber Orchestra in a winners concert. She and her brother Aaron won the grand prize in the 2008 SCMTA Sanford Wright Chamber Music Competition performing a Boccherini violin and cello duo, and she placed first in the SCMTA Piano Scholarship Competition in 2007 and 2008.
She performs in several orchestras and ensembles. Every Sunday Sarah enjoys playing with her church’s orchestra; she played her violin in the orchestra for the Arlington Community Messiah Concert for the past two years. And every Saturday Sarah plays with a string ensemble at the Academy of Music Northwest. Currently she is working with her brother and six other musicians on one of Mendelssohn’s string octets that they will be performing at the academy’s benefit recital June 9 in the Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall in Seattle.
She and her brothers Aaron and Isaac have recorded two albums, with Aaron doing the recording at Fruitful Farm Studio. Aaron was alternate winner of senior strings, but he is not going to Georgia, Carla said. He will be competing in a concerto competition here at home on March 28, the same date that Sarah will be competing in Atlanta.
Sarah enjoys reading, writing letters, baking and helping her older brother milk his Jersey cows and feed the calves at Fruitful Farm in Oso.
Tax-deductible donations can be sent to Academy of Music Northwest, 9109 196th St. SW, Edmonds, WA. 98026-6333 with “Sarah” written in the memo line.
