EAST LANSING, Mich. — A Michigan State University oboe student is a recipient of an award recognizing her achievement in the arts.
Sarah Lewis, of Petoskey, received the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts for 2009. Lewis graduated from MSU this month, receiving her College of Music undergraduate degree in music performance.
“I was surprised and excited to find out I was selected to receive the award,” Lewis said. “It’s a real honor.”
The annual Sudler Prize is awarded nationally to top college seniors who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in an area of the performing and creative arts, including the fine arts, music, creative writing, theater and the electronic/photographic arts. Students are recommended for the award by faculty members from their home institutions.
Jan Eberle, associate professor of oboe, nominated Lewis for her eager attitude and natural talent as an oboist.
“Sarah is respectful, dedicated and hard working,” Eberle said. “She constantly gives back to her colleagues, the school and the community.”
Lewis’ resume in musical performance is extensive. By her sophomore year at MSU, she was chosen as one of five winners in the Honor’s Competition in the College of Music. As a junior, she was selected by national audition for one of three positions in the Chautauqua Summer Music Festival Orchestra. In the summer of 2008, Lewis placed as a finalist in the Sigma Alpha Iota National Concerto Competition.
Lewis will now attend the world-renowned Juilliard School of Music to pursue her master’s degree in oboe performance.
In addition, she has performed in student recitals, chamber music groups and area church services. She also volunteered as a reed-making tutor for international students and has performed in interactive children’s concerts, where a musician goes to a school or club to perform a concert for children and asks for participation from the children by clapping along or conducting the music.
The Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts has been honoring undergraduate students with artistic talent since 1982. Besides MSU, the award is given out at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chicago, Oberlin, Purdue, Duke, Rice, Stanford and Emory universities.
Sudler, a Chicago businessman and philanthropist who died in 1992, began his active support of music programs at MSU in1970, when he helped to bring the Beethoven Bicentennial Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to East Lansing. He also was a founding member of the WKAR Music Projects Advisory Board.
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