The Piccolo Artist Competition occurs every other year in Chicago, bringing some of the country’s best piccolo players together to compete. And this month, a BYU graduate took first place. The Piccolo Artist Competition is one of 19 competitions put on by the National Flute Association. Contestants include high school students, college students and professionals. Jennifer Nealon, a 2009 BYU School of Music graduate, took home a first place prize of $1,500 for her piccolo playing, beating out hundreds of other competitors. This is not the first time someone with a BYU affiliation has won a competition hosted by the National Flute Association. Annie Elmer, another 2009 SOM graduate, won first place in the Orchestral Audition Competition in 2010. In 2013, Catherine Winters, an incoming BYU freshman, won first place in the High School Soloist Competition.

From an applicant pool of about 1,000 singers, only 40 were invited to Los Angeles to compete at PlÁ¡cido Domingo’s annual Operalia competition a few days ago. Rachel Willis-SÁ¸rensen, a BYU School of Music graduate, recently took first place. She also received two other recognitions. Read the Los Angeles Times recap of the competition here.

The BYU Department of Dance is inviting interested students to audition for the World Dance groups. For the World auditions, women need to bring a male partner.

Discover some secrets to success as a CFAC student by browsing the New Student Orientation resources. Watch the videos on our NSO page to learn more about students like you who have had great experiences in the CFAC departments.

The internationally acclaimed performance group Living Legends will be holding open auditions for all interested Latin American, Polynesian and Native American full-time BYU students August 28-30, 2014.

Room E-509 of the Harris Fine Arts Center is home to the BYU Department of Visual Arts (DVA). It is here that everything must come together in order to enable the success of BYU’s painters, art educators, art historians, graphic designers, animators, sculptors, illustrators and photographers. Each department in the college has a secretary, and there are few as seasoned as Sharon Heelis, who recently hit her 34-year mark as the secretary for the department.

This fall, the line-up for BYU Arts includes someanticipated guests, as well as some classics and exciting ventures by BYUstudents. Click through this article to see some of the exciting guests andproductions on campus this fall!

Robert Barrett, a BYU Department of Visual Arts professor, helped out with a sketch night at the Animal Inside Out exhibition at The Leonardo, a contemporary museum in Salt Lake City for science and culture. About twenty artists joined Barrett for a night of sketching a variety of animal models. The museum is showcasing several different animals, each of which is opened up and preserved, providing artists with the unique opportunity to sketch their muscles and deeper anatomy. The event was recently featured in the Deseret News.

BYU Arts is making nine performances available for purchase to everyone at 9 a.m. on Monday, August 18. Tickets have only been accessible to season ticket holders thus far, but the doors will open up to all on “Super Monday.”

As the Harris Fine Arts Center’s 50th anniversary celebration draws near, the building itself is gearing up for the festivities with the installation of new window wraps on the north and south side.

Photo by Jocelyn Horne. Hundreds of students graduate from BYU’s Department of Theatre and Media Arts every year, prepared to bring their technical and artistic skills into the worlds of theatre, education, television or film. But Hannah Kroff hasn’t let that stop her from becoming more marketable upon her graduation from the College of Fine Arts and Communications this August.

The BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications’ convocation for August graduates will be hosted in the de Jong Concert Hall of the Harris Fine Arts Center on Friday, August 15, at 8 a.m. Many students have overcome many challenges and obstacles on the journey to graduation. Below are but a few examples.