Each year our Rotary Club has a program for the Dan Stover Music Contest.  This contest has been a highlighted program for many years.  Dan Stover, a Rotarian from the Alhambra Club initiated and sponsored this contest.  Dan was an accomplished musician, and also a member of a Barbershop Quartet.  His son, Dave Stover, has been in the Arcadia Club since 1995.  His dad, Dan, past away in 1987.

Our club member, Bob Young, was the emcee for this program and he introduced each of the four contestants.  Bob, being a choir singer knows how much practice it takes to become an accomplished musician.  He mentioned that more than likely each student performing today probably practices two to three hours a day.  They all nodded their heads in agreement.

The four contestants are seniors from Arcadia High School.  Mr. Tom Forbes is the Director of the Arcadia High Orchestra. 

From our club, we offered four prizes.  First prize was $500., 2nd prize was $300., third and fourth prize was $100. each.

The first student to play was Joseph An.  He performed on his cello beautifully.  His selection was a musical piece by the French composer, Lalo.  Joseph played Lalo’s Concerto in D minor.

Christopher Wong was next, playing music by Bach.  He played his violin and he selected Bach’s Prelude No. 3 in E major.

The third contestant was Juliet Chuang who plays both the piano and harp.  However, she chosed to play the piano for this contest.  She also selected Bach and her piano piece was Bach’s “Fantasies”.

Lucina Chiu was the last participant and played the violin.  The music she selected was Felix Mendelssohn’s, the “1st Movement”.

All of these Arcadia High seniors did an outstanding job in their performances.

Our Rotary judges, Mike Hoey, Tom Crosby and Dave Freeman excused themselves and left the room to make the final decisions on the placements of the musicians.

It should be mentiioned that these four students are competitors in many local contests leading up to a final District Regional contest.  The winner of the regional contest will receive a $15,000. scholarship to be used for their future schooling.

Our judges returned and Tom Crosby announced the placement winners.

Tom said that the judges could not decide if Juliet or Lucinda performed the best.  So the two girls tied for first and second place splitting the 1st and 2nd prize.  Christopher and Joseph placed 3rd and 4th, each earning $100.

Tom then casually interviewed each one and we learned that Lucinda is continuing her musical education by going for a BA in Arts.  Juliet was not sure where she is attending next year.  Joseph is going to USC to major in Biology.  Christoper is either going to UCI or UCLA to continue in a Music major.

It was a wonderful program and we heard the skill of these students and knew that they had worked hard to get to this point in this yearly contest.