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2012 VSA International Young Soloists Award

Since 1984, the VSA International Young Soloists Program has sought talented musicians who have a disability.  The Young Soloists Award is given annually to up to four outstanding musicians, two from the United States and two from the international arena.  The award provides an opportunity for these emerging musicians to each earn a $5,000 award, professional development opportunities, and a performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.  

This opportunity is open to solo performers and ensembles up to five members.  Musicians must be 14-25 years of age and at least one member of an ensemble must have a disability.  Musicians of any genre are eligible to apply.  The application deadline is January 31, 2012.

Click HERE to apply online through the Kennedy Center!

Congratulations to Riua Akinshegun, Marleena Coulston, and Leyna Strelkoff who will perform at the 2010 International VSA Festival in Washington D.C. June 6-12th!

Riua Akinshegun is a literary, performing, and visual artist whose spine was injured by a gunshot, leaving her with paraplegia. She chose to actively transcend her pain, channeling it to create her art: batiks, ceramic sculptures, African wrap dolls, and an interactive installation on the Middle Passage. She has also conducted workshops on art as a healing process. Akinshegun began writing under the tutelage of Victoria Lewis at the Mark Taper Forum's Other Voices program and later with writer/editor S. Pearl Sharp. She has lived and worked in Ile Ife, Nigeria; Georgetown, Guyana; Paramaribo, Suriname; La Mision, Mexico; and currently resides in Los Angeles, where she is completing her lively autobiography, The People I Could Have Been.

Marleena Coulston is active in promoting positive disability awareness through music and teaching. In addition to her work directing the Braille Institute's Johnny Mercer Children's Choir in Los Angeles, she has performed throughout southern California in various musical theater productions and as a solo artist at numerous festivals and concert venues. She appeared at the VSA Start with the Arts Family Festival in Washington, D.C., and on Capitol Hill for Arts Advocacy Day. Legally blind from birth due to albinism, Coulston's one-woman cabaret show, Thank You for the Music, tells the story of her life and how music played a vital role in her journey to believing in herself.

Lyena Strelkoff's creative life is motivated by a deep need for authentic expression, facilitating opportunities for collective healing and transformation. Paralyzed by a spinal cord injury, she creates performance works that expand the common understanding of life with a disability and suggest an alternate cultural response to adversity by illuminating the art of embracing life--in all its messiness. She tours nationally as a solo performer and writer, traveling most recently to Putney, Vermont, on a National Performance Network Community Fund grant. She teaches storytelling, writing, movement, and empowered living, helping people find their voice, tell their stories, heal, and thrive.