Final selection for the Pablo Casals International Award for Young Cellists was made virtually on 20th November 2020. The ten finalist candidates performed two pieces which they recorded for the jury to watch. The jury, chaired by Marta Casals Istomin, Co-founder and Vice-president of the Pau Casals Foundation, was made up of internationally renowned cellists such as Claudio Bohórquez, Henri Demarquette, Gustav Rivinus, Arnau Tomàs (winner of the Pablo Casals Scholarship in 1991), and also Bernard Meillat, artistic advisor of the Pau Casals Foundation and secretary of the jury, and deliberated by videoconference, in a virtual edition due to Covid-19.
Miquel Keenan Fuentes Bock, student at Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu (Spain). Born in Holland, USA, in 1999, he is currently studying at the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu in Barcelona under Professor Amparo Lacruz. He had previously studied at the Meadowmount School of Music and has performed with the Interlochen Orchestra, as well as at the Lincoln Centre’s Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse and Hope College Annual Concerto-Aria Competition.