The Georgia State University School of Music announces the winners of the 2025 Brumby Concerto and Aria Competition, one of the School’s most distinguished student performance opportunities. Fourteen students competed across strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, voice and original composition, making this one of the most competitive years in recent memory.
Cellist Rae Baker will perform the Adagio; Moderato from Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor with the Georgia State University Symphony Orchestra. Baker has more than a decade of performance experience and has appeared in venues including Carnegie Hall, Atlanta Symphony Hall and Spivey Hall. Her performance work spans both solo and ensemble settings across classical and contemporary repertoire.
Percussionists Blaze Benavides and Austin Mellen will be featured performing movement III of Ioannis John Psathas’s The All-Seeing Sky with the Symphony Orchestra. Benavides is a graduate assistant at Georgia State and holds a Bachelor of Music in Performance and Music Industry from James Madison University. His background includes work as a performer and audio technician with performance experience throughout Texas, Atlanta and the East Coast. Mellen, a percussion performer and educator based in the Metro Atlanta area, earned his bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University and is currently pursuing his master’s degree at Georgia State. His experience includes orchestral, theatrical and contemporary percussion performance as well as work as a clinician and instructor.
Bass trombonist Grant Erie will be featured as a soloist performing Derek Bourgeois’s Concerto for Trombone and Band with the Symphonic Wind Ensemble. An undergraduate student at the Georgia State University School of Music, Erie studies trombone performance under Dr. Bill Mann. He has earned recognition as a finalist in the 2024 Orchestra Bass Trombone Competition and placed third in the S.E. Shires Bass Trombone Solo Competition at the 2024 Southeast Trombone Symposium, and has previously performed Bourgeois’s concerto with the GSU Symphonic Wind Ensemble.
Winning performances will take place during Spring 2026. Grant Erie will appear as soloist with the Symphonic Wind Ensemble on Tuesday, February 17, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. at the Rialto Center for the Arts. Rae Baker, Blaze Benavides and Austin Mellen will be featured with the Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday, February 25, 2026 at 7:00 p.m. in Kopleff Recital Hall. Both concerts are free and open to the public.
The School of Music thanks this year’s panel of judges for their service and expertise: cellist Roee Harrán, composer and conductor Matthew Shorten and GRAMMY® Award–winning singer Jay Hunter Morris.
Congratulations to the 2025 Brumby Concerto and Aria Competition winners and to all students who participated.