It’s the time of the proclamations… and the winners of the PlayRight+ prizes are widely renowned in the various art schools and institutes. INSAS and the Lemmens Institute in Leuven are the first ones this academic year to award a prize to two very young, recently graduated laureates.

Eva papageorgiou received the PlayRight+ prize as best student in the Master of Dramatic Arts at INSAS for the year 2021. She reacted enthusiastically to her nomination and prize:

“I feel supported, encouraged, despite the tiredness after school, a good tiredness, and the great sadness I feel because I have to leave the place where I grew up. But this is a new impulse that gives me motivation and strength for the future. When I think back to the period of the competition – I was much younger then – I remember that I was so much more insecure, but the competition increased my confidence. We are so lucky to be able to go to schools like these in Belgium, and that there is so much attention to and encouragement for our creations. I will long remember the meetings and gatherings at INSAS. With this baggage I now leave, and with great desire to continue the work that I have been offered to start. A great thanks to the artistic teaching team and my friends. Until next time!”

Roeland Vermeulen is the winner of 2021 at the Lemmens Institute in Leuven. On the occasion of the awards at graduation, the team of professors paid tribute to him:

“It was written in the stars that he would become a musician. From the age of 10 he listened to everything that came close to classical music. First to Tchaikovsky’s symphonies that blew him away, a little later to other symphonic work and piano music. At the age of 14 he went to the art school, here at the Lemmens Institute. He won the Cantabile competition twice, the Stefan de Jonghe competition and he got a third place at the international EPTA competition, being the only Belgian in all categories.

A small anecdote: At the age of 14 he made a few transcriptions of Rachmaninoff’s piano preludes for symphonic orchestra. He secretly put these on the international score site IMSLP. As a result, his parents received a phone call some time later from an Italian concert organiser asking if he could speak to the “maestro” as he wanted to organise a concert with him. His father, who didn’t know anything about this, nearly fell off his chair and kindly declined the offer. After all, his son was still a little boy…

To his father’s despair, he never studied more than a few hours a day. The rest of the time he would fill with symphonies and other repertoire reading at the piano.Recently, when asked if he was willing to register for an international competition, his answer was short: no! It’s not that he doesn’t like being on stage, on the contrary, every concert is a celebration for him, but he wants to keep making music as varied as possible: playing, practicing chamber music, accompanying and who knows, maybe one day conducting, composing,…