About the Bill and Pat Medley Pre-College Piano Competition
The 2020 Bill and Pat Medley Pre-College Piano Competition is open to Wisconsin residents who are in 4th through 12th grade. Please click on the "Learn More" button for detailed information about the rules and requirements. Once you have read the rules and requirements page and your video is ready, the registration form can be found below.
Video submission deadline: May 1, 2020, 11:59PM
The inspiration for the 2020 inaugural Bill and Pat Medley Pre-College Piano Competition for the state of Wisconsin is two-fold:
(1) Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, our Wisconsin students are dealing with indefinite school closings and canceled recitals, competitions, and performances. We know that students benefit from specific and time-bound goals. The Bill and Pat Medley Pre-College Piano Competition was developed in order to help our students remain motivated and practicing during this uncertain time.
(2) Bill and Pat Medley were devoted to their students and they loved competitions. They found that their students thrived off of the experience, no matter the outcome. While it is exciting to win, the idea of competition is much more than winning or not. Bill and Pat also stressed the importance of competitions to be utilized as learning tools for their students to push themselves and to gain helpful feedback from others.
Below, you will find information about the 2020 Bill and Pat Medley Pre-College Piano Competition along with the entry form. You can also learn more about the Medleys’ career by perusing further down the page.
We would like to thank the private donors who generously supported this competition with monetary prizes.
If you have questions, please feel free to contact me through my website. Thank you for your interest and support!
-William P. Whipple, Founder and Competition Organizer
The adjudicators for the 2020 Competition are Dr. Brandon Bascom, Dr. Ann DuHamel, and Mr. Levi Gunardi.
Competition Registration
All boxes are required. You will receive a confirmation email after you submit your registration.
About Bill (1926-2018) and Pat (1927-2019) Medley
"The demonstration of a high degree of perception and teamwork on the piano keyboard has brought widespread public applause to one of America's outstanding two-piano teams, William and Patricia Medley." ...from Par Records Production liner notes.
The Medleys (yes, that was their real name), two-piano career lasted more than sixty-five years. Promoted as, "America's most often re-engaged Two-Piano Team," the Medleys played more than one thousand concerts and recitals in forty-seven of the United States, Australia, and ten Canadian Provinces, including the first piano recital ever given in the Northwest Territory. For eight years the Medleys performed on a full-time basis, averaging around eighty concerts per year, and in the 1958-1959 season they appeared in one hundred and nineteen concerts, which broke the world record at the time for the number of two-piano concerts performed in a single year.
In addition to their performance career, the Medleys were prolific pedagogical composers. They were the authors of The Medley Way (an original piano method series published by Hal Leonard Music Company) and their pedagogical solos are available from the Willis Music Company, FJH Music Company, and the Alfred Music Company.
For more information about the life and career of Bill and Pat Medley, click on the "Learn More" button below.