(Photo courtesy of Min-On Concert Association)

The 2024 Tokyo International Conducting Competition, organized by Min-On Concert Association, dropped its curtain at the Opera City Concert Hall in Tokyo yesterday.

Thirty-five-year old Greek candidate Kornilios Viktor Michailidis was awarded 1st Prize as well as the Orchestra Award, bagging home 2 million Japanese Yen cash prize.

A graduate of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Kornilios holds a master’s degree in conducting from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He served as assistant conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra during the 2016-17 season and of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France from 2018 to 2020. He has conducted several opera performances at the Teatro Real in Madrid, including productions of The “Magic Flute” and “Nixon in China.”

Riley Holden Court-Wood, 27 years of age, from U.K. finished second and won the Audience Award, taking home 1.1 million Japanese Yen cash prize in total.

As the only female contestant among the four who made it to the final, the 23-year-old Japanese candidate Ayano Yoshizaki finished third and was awarded the much coveted Hideo Saito Award, with a cash prize worth 1 million Japanese Yen combined.

They were judged by a male-dominating panel chaired by Japanese conductor Tadaaki Otaka. Other jurors were Okko Kamu, Rainer Küchl, Hubert Soudant, Ken Takaseki, Jeff Alexander, Tatsuya Shimotsuke, Mike George, Junichi Hirokami.

Founded in 1967 by Tokyo based Min-On Concert Association, the Tokyo International Conducting Competition has proved a decisive career booster to its recent laureates. Nodoka Okisawa, winner of the 2018 edition, went on to win the Grand Prix at the renowned Concours international de jeunes chefs d’orchestre de Besançon in France in 2019. She was appointed assistant conductor to Kirill Petrenko at Berlin Philharmonic, and serves as chief conductor of the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra in Japan.