Whitefish Bay Singer Wins National Award

Whitefish Bay High School junior Emily Pogorelc has won the Friedrich and Virginia Schorr Memorial Award in both the high school opera and art song divisions, for 2013. 

Pogorelc, 16, has been studying voice since she was nine years old. She was selected from applications reviewed this spring from all across the United States. 

The American Prize, founded in 2009, is a series of non-profit competitions designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The American Prize in Vocal Performance – Friedrich and Virginia Schorr Memorial Award rewards the best performances by classically trained vocalists in America in 2012-13, based on submitted recordings.

In the past year, Pogorelc was awarded first place at the Classical Singer Magazine Competition, Music Teachers National Association Competition, the Schmidt Competition and the Walgreen's National Concerto Competition as well as winning first place at the National Association of Teachers of Singing competition in Wisconsin. 

This year, she won a place in the Florentine Opera High School Master Class Competition. Emily has performed with the Florentine Opera, Skylight Opera and Opera a la Carte and attended Walnut Hill's summer intensive program in 2012.