Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra recently announced the winners of its 2020 Young Artist Concerto Competition.

Yvette Kraft (violin) is the 2020 winner of the Senior Division and Daniel Stein (cello) of the Junior Division.

Both musicians will join the BSO for their spring concert on May 30 and May 31 to perform the works that garnered their winning placement in the competition.

Kraft will perform Felix Mendelssohn’s “Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 (1st movement),” and Daniel will perform Édouard Lalo’s “Cello Concerto in D minor (1st movement).”

Kraft was born in Spokane and began violin at the age of 5 with Mateusz Wolski. She has performed at master classes with prominent musicians including Noah Bendix-Balgley, Augustin Hadelich, Josef Špaček, Vadim Gluzman, Ilya Kaler, and Shlomo Mintz, among others.

She made her debut with the Spokane Symphony at the age of 11 and since then has won multiple concerto competitions in Washington, Idaho and Michigan, and has performed as a soloist with the Spokane Symphony, Spokane Youth Symphony, Interlochen Intermediate Orchestra, the Washington/Idaho Symphony, Seattle’s Philharmonia Northwest Orchestra. She will be debuting with the Seattle Symphony in 2020, having won their Young Artist Appearance Award this year.

She is a 2019 Seattle Young Artist Music Festival Gold Medalist and a semi-finalist in the 2019 Louis Spohr International Violin Competition, and will be competing on the international stage again in the Grumiaux International Violin Competition in Brussels, Belgium in March.

Daniel Stein, 16, began cello lessons at the age of 6 at the Hochstein School in Rochester, New York and has since studied with teachers at home and abroad, including Pippa Macmillan and Kirsten Jensen in Cambridge, England, and Priscilla Jones of Bainbridge.

While in England, he also had the opportunity to collaborate with the Britten Sinfonia, as well as the Seraphin Chamber Orchestra at King’s College, Cambridge.

Stein currently studies with Rajan Krishnaswami in Seattle, and plays a 1933 Marc Laberte cello generously loaned to him by the Carlsen Cello Foundation.

He also plays in the cello sections of both Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra and the Bainbridge Island Youth Orchestra, as well as with a string quartet composed of Island teenagers. Daniel conducts his studies at home.

Besides cello, he especially enjoys Spanish and history. In his free time, he likes to play chess, as well as writing articles for the digital magazine Autodidact’s Journal.