This prestigious award will support the saxophonist in various artistic projects over a period of three years.
Estel Vivó Casanovas, saxophonist and graduate of the Conservatori del Liceu, has recently won the Young Concert Artists (YCA) 2025 Jacobs Fellowship award.
The award recognises the most brilliant young musicians on the international scene. In this edition, two performers and a chamber group were selected from more than 200 applicants to form part of the new class of YCA Jacobs Fellows. The winners were announced after the Susan Wadsworth International Auditions with twelve finalists, which took place in New York City on 9 November.
The Jacobs Fellowship includes a three-year grant for artistic projects for professional recordings, tours, commissions for new works or audiovisual production. This support allows the winners to develop with personalised mentoring and guide their careers towards international excellence. The young saxophonist is the third Spanish performer to receive this prestigious award, after pianist Albert Cano Smit and clarinettist Jose Franch-Ballester.
Estel Vivó graduated from the Liceu Conservatory, where she studied saxophone with Professor Albert Julià as a scholarship holder of the Ferrer Music Foundation. Vivó continued her musical training in the United States, where she completed a Master’s degree in Saxophone Performance at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester. She is currently completing her Doctor of Musical Arts studies thanks to the Robert O’Lehman scholarship, and developing the project ‘Masked Dissonance: Avant-Garde Music as a Subtle Resistance in Francoist Spain’.
Throughout her career, she has been recognised with various awards, both as a soloist and in chamber ensembles with the Mezzo Quartet, Delia Quartet, Etna Quartet and Amia, among others, with whom she has performed at festivals and competitions in both Europe and the United States.
With this new recognition, Estel Vivó ranks among the most outstanding emerging performers and gains new momentum for her career in international classical music.
Image: photo provided by Estel Vivó.