Calling All Oboists: The Sony Music Foundation is hosting the 10th International Oboe Competition of Japan in September 2012 – and applications will be accepted February 1-April 2, 2012. It’s a prestigious competition: past prize winners are now serving as principal oboists of such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw, Berlin Deutsche Opera Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. For more information, please visit oboeck.jp.

The University of British Columbia has announced the finalists for this year’s Knigge Piano Competition, the fifth annual iteration of the competition. The competition is open to pianists between 16-25 years of age who are Canadian and/or studying in Canada. In alphabetical order, the 2012 finalists are: Isabelle David (Montreal Conservatory); Shifra Day (University of Montreal); Alison Kilgannon (University of Montreal);
Christopher Kusahara (McGill); Jocelyn Lai (UBC); Rudin Lengo (Glenn Gould School); David McEvoy (Eastman School of Music); Yi Qing Tang (UBC). The competition takes place March 3 and 4 at UBC’s Roy Barnett Recital Hall. For more, please visit music.ubc.ca.

The Nouvel Ensemble Moderne has announced a February 15 deadline for composers and performers interested in taking part in the NEM’s 2012 New Music Session at Domaine Forget. Performers and composers will work alongside the NEM, its artistic director Lorraine Vaillancourt and composer Denys Bouliane to prepare new repertoire during an intensive two-week session, August 12-25. To learn more, please visit lenem.ca.