16 young musicians thrilled the audience at Wolverhampton Music Hub on Sunday, 26th of January as they competed in the first round of the national Rotary Young Musician Competition for places in the next round – which is the District Final to be held on February 9th.
Adjudicators Sarah Baker MA and Jack Apperley MA confessed they had extremely difficult decisions to make in selecting the winners in each of the instrumental and vocalist categories.
After considerable deliberation they decided that 14 year old Lily Cooper, who attends Wolverhampton Girls High School was the winning instrumentalist with her performance of Grieg’s sonata in E and the traditional folk song ‘Black Eyes,’ a very familiar melody.
Lilly leads the second violins for Wolverhampton Youth Orchestra and is a percussionist for Wolverhampton Youth Wind Orchestra.
Young Musician 2025 – Wolverhampton – Owen White receiving his certificate from President Lorraine McCarthy
The winning vocalist was 17 year old Owen White, a pupil of local singing teacher Brenda Arnold with his renditions of ‘On The Street Where You Live,’ by Lerner and Loewe, ‘Se Vuol Ballare’ by Mozart and ‘Stars’ by Schonberg, Kretzmer and Boubil.
Owen attends Birmingham Ormiston Academy and has appeared in several local amateur musicals. He works part time at Sainsburys where he enjoys singing in the aisles!
The event was sponsored by several local Rotary clubs.The President of the City of Wolverhampton club, Lorraine McCarthy, as she presented the winners trophies said ‘it is extremely rewarding to realise and enjoy the superb array of young musical talent that we have in and around the City.’
Photos show the w
hole vocalists and instrumentalist ensembles. 
PDG Richard Green