Shoreline Arts Alliance Photo
Brad Bahner, a drummer from Deep River, won the instrumental music category in last year’s Shoreline’s Top Talent competition.
The Shoreline Arts Alliance Monday announced the finalists for the organization’s Shoreline’s Top Talent scholarship competition. Scholarship winners will be announced at a May 1 Shoreline’s Top Talent Showcase at the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook.
The Shoreline’s Top Talent program, which has been in existence for 30 years, awards scholarships in the amount of $1,000 in six categories: creative writing, dance, instrumental music, vocal music, theater, and visual art. High school juniors and seniors who live between East Haven and East Lyme, and as far north as Middlefield, Haddam, and East Haddam, are eligible to apply and audition.
“The first year, we had one applicant and one winner,” Donita Aruny, Shoreline Arts Alliance’s programming and marketing director, said on Tuesday.
Professionals in the above-mentioned artistic disciplines judge more than 100 auditions each year. About 70 high school juniors and seniors applied this year, a number that was “lower than usual,” Aruny said, because “kids just weren’t in school” due to frequent inclement weather.
Auditions were held in several locations from mid-February through the beginning of March. Winners and runners-up in each category have already been identified.
“The judges decide that at the auditions,” Aruny said, although the finalists — with the exception of Deep River resident Meredith Kelly, who’s the only dance finalist — won’t know until May 1 if they’ve won scholarships.
East Lyme resident Marisa Glynn is a finalist in creative writing and visual art.
In addition to receiving scholarships in the amount of $1,000, competition winners are offered “professional mentoring sessions,” which are also offered to the runners-up.
“Every year I go to the showcase and I think the next year can’t be better,” Aruny said. “I’m always proven wrong.”
As identified in a press release issued Monday by the Shoreline Arts Alliance, the 2011 Shoreline’s Top Talent scholarship competition finalists are: writers Marisa Glynn (East Lyme High School) and Sophia Harvey (Lyme-Old Lyme High School), dancer Meredith Kelly (Valley Regional High School), instrumentalists Julie Blum (Westbrook High School) and Kathleen Wallace (Guilford High School), vocalists Anna Bencivengo (Clinton High School) and Emma Hartmann (Lyme-Old Lyme High School), actors Beth Gilchrist (Daniel Hand High School) and Michael Sullivan (Guilford High School), and visual artists Shannon Chapman (Lyme-Old Lyme High School) and Marisa Glynn (East Lyme High School).