And The Winner Is...

...pianist Nareh Arghamanyan, who is nineteen-years-old (!) and from Armenia. Last night, live from the Montreal International Musical Competition R2 host Kelly Rice (with Laurie Brown on The Signal) announced that Arghamanyan had won the $30,000 Grand Prize.

The second grand prize(s) went to Japan's Masataka Takada, and Russia's Alexandre Moutouzkine. The remaining three finalists, Elizabeth Schumann and Sara Daneshpour from the U.S and Canada's Sergei Saratovsky, will each receive a $4,000 prize.

Live audio/video webcasts of the quarter-finals and semifinals will remain on the MIMC website for a year, and the finals will be available at Concerts On Demand sometime soon -- I will post when they are available.

Stay tuned for the hardest working man in host business, Kelly Rice -- he'll file his last report reflecting on the competition shortly.

Photo by Gunther Gamper