Shepherd University piano performance major Jacob Livengood competes in the WVMTA Mountain State Competition in Shipley Recital Hall on Oct. 12. Courtesy photo

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Twenty-year-old Jacob Livengood, of Charles Town, was recently named the winner of a statewide piano competition.

The Shepherd University piano performance major competed in the West Virginia Music Teacher Association (WVMTA) Mountain State Competition at Shepherd University on Oct. 12.

“It was nice, because I can put it on my resume,” Livengood said on Monday. “It will be helpful, to be able to say that I won this competition.”

Livengood currently plans to apply for the Master of Music in Performance program at Shenandoah Conservatory in the near future. Having succeeded in a challenging competition like this one will only help his chances of getting into the program.

The competition required Livengood to prepare a half hour’s worth of music, which he performed back-to-back for a judge and audience in Shipley Recital Hall. With the support of his piano teacher, Shepherd University Associate Professor of Music and Coordinator of Keyboard Studies Yu-Hsuan Liao, he prepared works by three composers from different musical periods, over the past two months: Joseph Haydn’s Piano Sonata in G Major, Hob. XVI:40; Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 39, No. 2 in A Minor and No. 3 in F-sharp Minor; and the last six pieces in Bela Bartok’s Mikrokosmos: Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm.

“I had never played these pieces before. However, I’m a big fan of Rachmaninoff, so I was already familiar with those pieces. His etudes are some of my favorite pieces ever!” Livengood said, mentioning that he found that these pieces ended up being his easiest to perform during the competition. “It was what I did the best, surprisingly, since it was the hardest out of all of them.”

Livengood is a second semester sophomore and will be doing his junior piano recital next semester. For that recital, he said he will plan on perfecting the Bartok and Rachmaninoff pieces that he played in the Mountain State Competition, as well as preparing some others to complement them. To be fully prepared for the recital and for graduating early with his bachelor’s degree, he will continue taking twice-weekly, hour-long piano lessons with Liao.

“Since the beginning of the semester, I’ve been giving him an extra lesson each week, to help him prepare,” Liao said. “It’s an extra investment of time, but since he’s willing to put in the work, it’s worth it!”

Liao was the person to initially encourage Livengood’s participation in the competition. As the current president of the WVMTA and organizer of the WVMTA’s annual conference, with which the competition was held in conjunction at Shepherd on Oct. 11-12, Liao wanted to make sure Shepherd’s School of Music was well represented.

“I am very proud of Jacob for doing all of this work! I can’t wait to see over the next few years how he continues to grow as a musician,” Liao said, noting this recent competition stretched Livengood in new ways, as he had never performed as a soloist for this long a period of time before. “Competition is a nice opportunity for growth.”