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Nadia Azzi was born in 1998 and was a student at The Center for the Gifted Studies Magnet Program housed at Dunedin Highland Middle School in Dunedin, FL. She began playing the piano at the age of five with Kinuyo Engelbrecht who taught her music theory. Her teacher was the renowned international pianist, Leonidas Lipovetsky, and she received additional tutelage from Dr. Grigorios Zamparas, a concert pianist and professor at University of Tampa. She has become the winner of numerous piano and music competitions at the county, district, state, national, and international levels. Some of her achievements include being the winner in the Early Music Open Junior Category at 2011 Walgreens National Concerto Competition held in Fort Sheridan, IL; 1st place winner in the 2010 Orfeo International Music Competition in piano category held in Vipiteno, Italy; Gold Medalist at 2010 Passion of Music International Music Festival and has performed at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in NY; the recipient of 2010 Ruth B. Lockmiller Memorial Award at FFMC; nominated for Irene Muir Memorial Award at FFMC; and other numerous awards/scholarships at FFMC and FSMTA piano competitions.  In the past, she also had the honor of studying with Dr. Rita Fandrich of Florida Southern College, and had the opportunity of attending the 2010 Orfeo Music Summer Festival in Italy studying under Vladimir Khokhlov.

She made her first orchestral debut in Cambridge, MA with the Boston Neo-Politan Orchestra in June of 2011, and attended the Aspen Music Festival and School that summer studying under Yoheved Kaplinsky of the Juilliard School.

She also studies violin with Lei Liu, Second Assistant Concert Master at the Florida Orchestra. She became the concert master in the 2009-2010 All County Middle School Orchestra as well as the advanced orchestra at her middle school. Besides her music interests, she has excelled at many area of studies. She has won several awards such as 2010 MathMovesU Middle School Scholarship and Grant Program sponsored by Raytheon Company; 2009 Math P.R.I.D.E Award; and Award of Excellence in Odysseys and Expeditions at the Arts Center in St. Petersburg, FL. She is fluent in Japanese and English. She has attended Japanese pre-schools, and elementary schools for 2 months almost every summer since she was 3 years old. She received a bronze award in 2009 Fukui Prefecture Japanese Calligraphy Competition.

The Music of Dance

Featuring Nadia Azzi and The Bay City Ballet

Shall we dance? Much of the world’s great music was based on folklore. This fabulous show brings the music, the stories and the dances all together.

Fourteen year old prodigy Nadia Azzi has won top prizes in numerous competitions at the state, national, and international levels. She debuted at Carnegie Hall when she was just 11 years old! This phenomenally talented young lady excels both on piano and violin and will be featured in Grieg’s Piano Concerto and DeBariot’s Violin Concerto Scene de Ballet.

The Bay City Ballet will present dances from Tchaikovsky's ballet based on the legendary story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The company is under the direction of Mark Jelks. Mark toured Europe with the Scottish Ballet and was a staff member of the American Ballet Theatre in New York.

Tickets are $15.00 for open seating at the Center for the Arts at River Ridge. Show time is 3:00 p.m.

Download Ticket Order Form here.

    Nadia in late 2011

    Nadia has become the 1st place winner at the Crescendo Int'l   

Competition

   Nadia performed to over a thousand people in Montreal on Saturday,

    Link to Phoenicia News (Arabic) report on the event.

STIM.U.LI Presents

She combines with her versatile artistry as a recitalist, soloist, chamber musician, and even as an accompanist. She has become the winner of numerous competitions at county, district, state, national, and international levels. She recently competed at the 2011 New Music National Young Artist Competition in Chicago, IL and became the Winner of the Overall Award and the ART New Music Award.  

On June 4, 2011, Nadia made her orchestral debut at age 12 performing Beethoven`s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Boston Neo-Politan Orchestra in Cambridge, MA under the baton of conductor John Ceander Mitchell. She performed the original Finale (Rondo WoO6) for this program, "Mozart's Spirit through Haydn's Hands." Nadia will spend this summer at the Aspen Music Festival and School as one of the youngest participants accepted into the program. Winner of the 2011 New Music National Young Artist Competition, Nadia has been invited to perform her solo recital program at WFMT 98.7 Chicago in addition to the opportunity to be coached by composer Augusta Read Thomas as well as Ms. Mary Sauer of the New Music School and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  

Since the age of 6, she devotes her extra time to perform chamber music and for assisted living facilities and churches to connect with the elderly and the community. She is the featured soloist at the annual SAROA concert in Clearwater, FL with an extensive solo recital program. She also provides piano/harpsichord accompaniment at the Pinellas Youth Symphony Orchestra/Serenade Strings and the Bonnie Lads & Lassies Chorus. At the age of 10, Nadia has started taking violin lessons, and has become the concertmaster in the 2009-2010 All County Middle School Orchestra as well as the alternate winner at the 2011 FSMTA Concerto Competition. Besides her music interests, she is among the most academically gifted seventh grader at the 2011 Duke University Talent Identification Program.   

She has won several awards such as the 2010 MathMovesU Middle School Scholarship and Grant Program sponsored by Raytheon Company; 2009 Math P.R.I.D.E Award; and Award of Excellence in Odysseys and Expeditions at the Arts Center in St. Petersburg, FL. She is fluent in Japanese and English. She has attended Japanese pre-schools and elementary schools for 2 months almost every summer since she was 3 years old. She received a bronze award in 2009 Fukui Prefecture Japanese Calligraphy Competition. Born in Dunedin, FL to Japanese-Lebanese parents, Nadia began playing the piano at the age of five with Kinuyo Engelbrecht who is now teaching her music theory. Her current teacher is a renowned international pianist, Leonidas Lipovetsky, and she receives additional tutelage from Dr. Grigorios Zamparas, a concert pianist and professor at University of Tampa.     

From the St Petersburg Times: April 17th, 2010

Dunedin sixth-grader will play piano at New York City's Carnegie Hall

By Rebecca Catalanello, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Saturday, April 17, 2010

DUNEDIN — When she wakes in the morning, her fingers move along the pillow.

Eleven-year-old Nadia Azzi is playing piano in her mind.

As a pre-schooler, her teachers worried she didn't know how to speak. Quiet and shy, she could get through a school day in virtual silence.

Then came the piano.

Azzi's mother, Kaori Azzi, was a casual pianist in her youth. When pregnant with Nadia, she played a little Mozart in hopes of helping her new baby's development.

She did not know this would happen.

Nadia took her first piano lesson before she turned 5.

On Sunday, she plays at Carnegie Hall. A week later, she joins some of Tampa Bay's finest classical musicians on a local stage.

One teacher calls her a prodigy. She says she simply loves music.

"I'm obsessed," Nadia confided Thursday in between orchestra class at Dunedin Highland Middle School and her violin lesson with Florida Orchestra member Karl Bawel.

Oh, yes, she plays violin now, too.

• • •

At the end of seventh period, Nadia's orchestra class wants to hear her play.

The sixth-grader is 92 pounds and about 5 feet tall, a small person in this large, high-ceilinged room.

As she approaches the seat on the upright piano, she kneads her thin fingers to warm and stretch them.

Her eyes look down through her tiny glasses, her pony tail points up. Her legs are striped with black and white piano key knee-high socks. She sits on her poofy black skirt. Narrow shoulders hunch. And it begins.

Khachaturian's sonatina for piano.

Fingers dance like jumping spiders, spreading and moving. Her black size 6 ballet flat pumps the piano pedal, pulling her weight from the seat then down again.

In her mind, she imagines war and blood, what it must have been like in the composer's war-torn country of Armenia in the 1940s. Sound swallows the room, a succession of quick notes that signal power and fullness so much larger than she.

She's practiced this. And practiced this.

She spends at least 15 hours a week practicing on one of the three pianos in her family's Palm Harbor home. Then, she devotes another 30 to 45 minutes a day to the violin.

Add to that once-weekly lessons both with Bawel and piano teacher Kinuyo Engelbrecht and two hours on Sunday with the Pinellas Youth Symphony.

"Every night we have to fight that she has to go to bed," her mother says. "Otherwise, she will be playing until 2 or 3 in the morning."

• • •

"Nice. Good," the teacher says as his student finishes playing a Bach air for violin. "What's your analysis?"

"My bow needs to be flatter," she says standing before him.

"Why?" he asks.

Bawel, a 30-year member of the Florida Orchestra, first met Nadia in September 2008.

"I didn't have any expectations," he remembered.

She was new to the instrument, said liked the way it sounded. Some of her friends played it.

"It became very apparent at the very first lesson that she had some major talents," he said. "I've had some good students in the past, some very good students who have gone on to major orchestras. … But this one's special. Very special."

Within a year, Nadia was concert master for the All-County Middle School Orchestra. She walked into her middle school and played her way into first chair for the advanced orchestra.

"She gets a fullness out of it that she shouldn't at her age," Dunedin Middle teacher Katherine Laursen said.

Nadia's developing so quickly on the violin that Bawel has decided he must relinquish her to another teacher at the end of the summer.

Bawel is a trained violinist, but viola is his passion. To continue to challenge Nadia on the violin would mean reacquainting himself with violin pieces that are buried in his memory.

"She's going so fast and at this stage of the game, I don't want to pull out those major concertos and relearn them," he said with a chuckle.

Nadia is a little heart-broken about the transition.

Bawel, she said, challenges her. He doesn't simply let her slide on talent.

Bawel sees it another way: He's warding off ego by keeping her feet on the ground.

• • •

Nadia will play the Khachaturian sonatina at one of the world's most famous music halls on Sunday during the International Young Musicians Festival.

Her mother, worried Nadia would be rejected, had sent the audition tape in secretly. Nadia won a gold medal in her age group.

At the end of their lesson Thursday, Bawel asked Nadia to put away her violin and play what she'd be playing at Carnegie Hall.

She sat at his upright piano and swept the keys.

When she was finished he asked: "What's your analysis?"

"It needs to be louder at the end," she said.

Rebecca Catalanello can be reached at (727) 893-8707 or rcatalanello@sptimes.com.

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