Santiago Canon Valencia

16 year-old Colombian cellist Santiago Canon-Valencia is already known around the world for his extraordinary virtuosic and musical cello-playing gifts. Making his debut as a concerto soloist playing Vivaldi with the Bogota Philharmonic at the age of 6 years old, Santi has performed with major orchestras many times since, including Haydn’s great D major Cello Concerto at the age of 9, Dvorak’s Cello Concerto age 12, making him probably the youngest cellist in the world to perform this huge and great work with orchestra, and Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto at age 14.

Santi was accepted to compete in the International Cello Competitions of Mexico (when he was just 11 years old). Adam International Cello Competition (NZ) (when he was 13 years old) and now the Beijing International Cello Competition which will take place in China in October this year, 2010. In all these competitions the upper age limit is 30 to 32 years old, so Santiago has been competing against cellists who have completed their full-time music studies and become professional cellists. Nevertheless, at age 11 he received one of the few prizes in the Mexico competition, and he went away with 2 of the 7 prizes in the Adam International Competition, at 13 years old.

Santi has been studying with James Tennant for 3 to 6 month periods over the last 3 years (travelling from Bogota, Colombia to do so), and in March of this year took his place (at age 14!) on the Bachelor of Music Degree course at the University of Waikato studying under James Tennant, in a special new ‘Soloist Stream’ designed to cater to very exceptional talent. Santi has played for a number of world-famous musicians including Yo-Yo Ma, Andras Dias, Pieter Wispelwey, Aldo Parisot, Alban Gerhardt, Li Wei Qin, Franz Helmerson, and Wolfgang Schmidt.