The "Back to BACH" Project

Described as “Prodigiously gifted, displaying an artistic sensibility well beyond his tender years” (Winnipeg Free Press), David Liam Roberts was recently awarded 1st place in the strings category as well as the Grand Award at the 2018 FCMF National Music Festival of Canada. Earlier in 2018, he was also awarded 2nd prize in the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg (WMC) McLellan Competition after a performance of Dvorak’s B minor Cello Concerto with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. The 18-year-old cellist has also been awarded prizes at the Canadian Music Competition, in addition to numerous scholarships and honors from local competitions in Winnipeg. David Liam began his cello studies at the age of three, and on his fourteenth birthday became one of the youngest winners of the Aikins Trophy Competition, the Winnipeg Music Festival’s highest instrumental honor. Last year, he was awarded the grand prize of the 2017 Virtuosi Concerts Young Artists Program Auditions, which culminated in his fourth appearance as a Young Artist in the series, opening for the Dover Quartet. He has also been awarded the Madeline Gauvin and Berythe Birse scholarships from the WMC Scholarship Competition.

As the winner of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s 2016 Student Soloist Competition, David Liam performed as soloist with the WSO in several concerts at local schools as a part of their “Up Close and Orchestral” tour. He has also appeared as soloist with the Winnipeg Youth Symphony Orchestra, in which he served as principal cellist for several years. A seasoned recitalist, he performed a solo recital for the 2015 Agassiz Chamber Music Festival, in addition to having organized and performed seven public solo recitals in the past. He also spends much of his time as a chamber musician, and performed often as a member of the Chroma Quartet from 2014 to 2017. During the 2017-2018 season, he was a frequent substitute cellist with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. David Liam currently studies with Hans Jensen and Andrés Díaz at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music, where he holds a full scholarship as the Robert & Andrea Chisholm scholar. He is in his first year of the Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance (Honours) degree., having been a student of Yuri Hooker in Winnipeg for eight years. During the summer of 2018, he was one of only two Canadian cellists participating in the international Morningside Music Bridge program and festival in Warsaw, Poland. He has had lessons and masterclasses with many of the world’s foremost cello pedagogues, including Colin Carr, Laurence Lesser, Zvi Plesser, Wei Yu, Ariel Barnes, Paul Katz and Tian Bonian. He has attended Morningside Music Bridge for four summers and the Meadowmount School of Music during the summer of 2016. An artist dedicated to communicating meaningful ideas through music, he enjoys reading the classics of literature and thinking deeply. David Liam plays a cello that was made for him in 2017 by Canadian luthier, Garth Lee. David joined the "Back to BACH" project in the fall of 2016, serving as Winnipeg's Regional Director. He will be the regional director of Toronto from the fall of 2018, also serving as Canada's Global Development Associate.