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Student pianist Isabelle Bruening opens for Coastal Concerts

March 2, 2022

The audience at Coastal Concerts’ Feb. 19 Canellakis-Brown Duo concert with Orion Weiss and Ian David Rosenbaum was treated to a surprise opening. Isabelle Bruening, a 17-year-old pianist, gave a stunning performance of “La Serena (The Mermaid),” written in 2020 by Israeli American composer Ofer Ben-Amots.

Isabelle was last year’s recipient of the Dorothy and Elizabeth Music Scholarship, Coastal Concerts’ most prestigious award in its annual music scholarship program. Receipt of this award helped her attend the 2021 Interlochen Center for the Arts summer piano program.

Bruening is an 11th-grader at Wilmington’s Cab Calloway School of the Arts and enjoys private music instruction from University of Delaware professor Marie-Christine Delbeau.

The Dorothy and Elizabeth Music Scholarship Fund, which resides with the Delaware Community Foundation, was established by Peter and Joanne Harrigan in 2014 in honor of their mothers’ love of music and appreciation of learning. It is awarded to a talented student musician to further their music education. Their generous ongoing contributions over the years have attracted additional donors to the program, thereby enabling multiple young musicians to receive its benefits every year.

In November 2019, Isabelle took a master class in piano given at her school by Michael Brown, one of the headlining musicians also performing Feb. 19.

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