UGA School of Music student wins International Clarinet Association competition

Ivan Hernandez, a DMA Performance – Clarinet student at the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music, won the International Clarinet Association’s Orchestral Audition Competition at the University of Kansas’ Inge Memorial Hall on August 5.

As part of the association’s 2016 ClarinetFest event, the competition saw Hernandez and three other musicians from across the country—selected from a pool of players who submitted recordings in a preliminary round—play a series of excerpts for three judges.

From a report on the association’s website, Hernandez “had technical and expressive control of each work he played.” It went on to praise his ability to bring forward subtle accents and play difficult passages with ease: “Every clarinetist should envy the flawless ease with which he plays the end of [Ravel’s] Daphnis.”

Hernandez received $1,000 and a Gregory Smith mouthpiece for winning the competition.

Hernandez, from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, has served as the substitute clarinet for the Valley Symphony Orchestra, the principal clarinetist of University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB) Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, second clarinet in the Waco Symphony, and a member of the Baylor Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble.

Hernandez has previously won the concerto competition at UTB and the Texas Music Teachers National Association’s chamber woodwind competition.

The UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music is a rising national leader in musical education and performance. With over 300 undergraduate and 200 graduate students, the School of Music trains the music performers, educators, scholars, composers and therapists of tomorrow with world-class facilities, unparalleled instruction and hundreds of performance opportunities each year