Join the audience for the final round of the VSO School of Music’s 2026 Future of Excellence Competition. Winners will be decided in both Senior & Junior categories, with the Junior winner earning the opportunity to perform as a soloist with a VSO School of Music ensemble, and the Senior Winner performing as a soloist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in their next season.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact events@vsoschoolofmusic.ca.
Learn more about the Future of Excellence Competition
Future of Excellence Jury:
Adrian Fung
Trevor Wilson
Jane Coop
Adrian Fung
Dr. Adrian Fung is an award-winning cellist, educator, and arts leader recognized as one of Musical America’s “30 Innovators of the Year.” Adrian is the Senior Vice President, Artistic of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. He is also the Executive and Artistic Director of Music In The Morning, Vancouver’s celebrated concert series. A passionate advocate for the arts, he has held senior leadership roles at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Conservatory, and the University of Oklahoma, where he was Associate Dean and Associate Professor. In Oklahoma, he founded the International Arts Incubator and established innovative undergraduate and graduate programs in arts entrepreneurship.
As the founding cellist of the critically acclaimed Afiara Quartet, Adrian has won the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, the Young Canadian Musicians Award, and 2nd prizes at the Munich ARD and Banff International String Quartet Competitions. He also received the Szekely Prize for Best Interpretation of Beethoven. A JUNO-nominated artist and producer, his projects have been featured in Forbes and CBC Music’s Top 10 Albums of the Year. With over 600 concerts across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, he has performed at prestigious venues including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, London’s Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, and Austria’s Esterházy Palace. Adrian has also served as a jury member for major competitions, including the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Competition, ECM Generation National Award, and the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition.
Adrian holds a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership from the University of Southern California, an MBA from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, a Bachelor of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory, and a Licentiate from McGill University. Fortune magazine recognized him as one of the “Best and Brightest Executive MBAs” worldwide.
He studied cello with Bonnie Hampton, Joel Krosnick, Fred Sherry, Antonio Lysy, David Hetherington, and Susan Gagnon. He performs on a rare 1787 Benjamin Banks cello, generously on lifetime loan from an anonymous donor.
Trevor Wilson
Trevor Wilson is a conductor and composer who from 2022–2025 held the position of RBC Resident Conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and served as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra during the 2024/2025 season. Trevor has also appeared as a guest conductor with orchestras across Canada, including the NAC Orchestra and Symphony Nova Scotia, and was recently appointed RBC Resident Conductor of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
Under the mentorship of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Trevor was among the inaugural cohort of the Orchestre Métropolitain’s Orchestral Conducting Academy, participating from 2021–2024. Also active in the musical community of his native Ottawa, Trevor has directed the University of Ottawa Orchestra and, in 2017, co-founded the Ottawa Pops Orchestra, having served as Music Director until 2019 and continuing to collaborate with the ensemble to the present day.
Having attended numerous masterclasses and festivals, Trevor has had the opportunity to study under internationally renowned conductors and pedagogues such as Alexander Shelley, David Zinman, Gerard Schwarz, Neil Varon, and served as assistant conductor of the National Academy Orchestra of Canada under the late Boris Brott in summer 2019. Trevor completed his graduate studies in orchestral conducting under Marin Alsop at the Peabody Conservatory.
Jane Coop
Pianist Jane Coop is one of Canada’s most prominent and distinguished artists. At the age of nineteen she won First Prize in the CBC Radio’s national competition and this, along with First Prize at the Washington International Competition, launched her career.
Her principal teachers for advanced studies were Anton Kuerti and Leon Fleisher. She has played in over twenty countries, in such eminent halls as the Bolshoi Hall in St. Petersburg, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the Beijing Concert Hall and the Salle Gaveau (Paris).
Coop is a cherished faculty artist at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival (Blue Hill, Maine) where for a quarter of a century she has been collaborating with members of the Juilliard Quartet among other noted string players.
Her commitment to teaching is centred around her long-time position at the University of British Columbia’s School of Music, where she was Professor and Distinguished University Scholar. A Killam Research Prize and Teaching Award were presented to her in honour of her work within UBC and in the international music community.
Coop has been an invited jury member for international piano competitions in Canada, the USA (New York, Washington, Salt Lake City), China and Great Britain. Her sixteen CD recordings have garnered glowing reviews and have been heard on classical radio programs in many countries. In 2012, Jane Coop was appointed to the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest honour for lifetime achievement, and in 2017, she was successfully nominated to the Order of British Columbia.