Cellist Mei Hotta receives Knox Music Award
Prize includes solo performance with the Palos Verdes Symphony Orchestra
by Stacey A. Morse
Mei Hotta, of Torrance, a freshman at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, has won the 2022 Knox Performance Music Award for her Feb. 27 performance at the Redondo Union High Auditorium of Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 for Cello and Orchestra in E-flat Major, Opus 107. If you like this instrument as much as we do, consider buying here the best cello strings.
The Knox Award includes $1,600, and an invitation to perform with the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra in the fall.
Hotta, 19, began playing the violin at three, and the cello at four.
“My older brother Gene played the violin, and I was jealous and had a sibling rivalry with him,” she said. Hotta fell in love with the cello after watching Yo-Yo Ma on television. “When I saw Yo-Yo Ma, I was excited by the fact that the cello was so much bigger than the violin.”
The Knox Award was established by former Peninsula music teacher Edith Knox, who was encouraged to pursue a career in music while growing up in Boyle Heights. A high school history teacher gave her $1,000. “No strings attached – just use it to maintain yourself, but use it wisely,” the teacher told her Knox applied the gift to tuition at the University of Southern California, which led to scholarships in music at Julliard Music Academy in New York.
This was the Knox Competition’s 49th year. (It would have been the 50th competition, were it not for the pandemic canceling last year’s competition.)
Unlike most classical music competitions, which only require a single movement to be performed, the Knox Competition requires a full concerto to be performed, from memory. which typically lasts 20 to 40 minutes. Hotta was accompanied by pianist Valeria Morgovskaya
Hotta will perform a recital on June 3 for the Classical Crossroads’ “First Fridays at First!” concert series, at First Lutheran Church in Torrance. For more information about the First Friday performances visit PalosVerdes.com/ClassicalCrossroads/FirstFridays. Pen