Greetings from President of the Jury

Last year, when we first faced the novel coronavirus, many music competitions were forced to cancel or postpone. The Shimoda International Music Competition was one of the first to institute online judging rounds, and received much international attention, both from participants and the public. Since then, many music competitions have adopted online rounds.

The Shimoda International Music Competition has continued to develop and expand in that time, and now supports a larger number of instruments and base of participants. Our contestants have also become more expert with their recording techniques. Along with the increased refinement in their production, our judges have found a greater enthusiasm in adjudicating the rounds.

Our data shows that, in many cases, the difference in scores between participants was miniscule. All of our jury members felt this as a hard challenge in selecting winners.

Not withstanding issues of scoring, all of our prize winners across all instruments impressed the jury. Throughout, we were all made aware of the universality of music.

The Eighth Shimoda International Music Competition will be held in February of 2022. We wish for especially those artists who were so close to winning a prize, to pick up the challenge once more with our competition this coming year.

Though the rounds will be conducted online through recorded video, we sincerely look forward to seeing our prize winners in person in July.

Toshiki Usui

President of the Jury