Access/VSA International Young Musicians

Tips for 2025 Applications

Each year outstanding young musicians with disabilities from around the world receive the Access/VSA International Young Musicians Award, $2,000, and the opportunity to perform and participate in professional development and music coaching activities provided by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. This program is open to soloists and ensembles of any instrument or genre.

All genres of music are accepted, including but not limited to classical, jazz, hip-hop, rap, rock/alt rock, pop, indie, bluegrass, folk, country, R&B/blues, Latin, and world. All instruments, including voice, are accepted.

Since 1984, the VSA International Young Soloists Competition has recognized talented, emerging musicians living with disabilities from all over the world. Five young artists have been named winners of the 2019 award, each receiving $2,000 and the opportunity travel to Washington, DC for pre-professional development activities culminating in a performance on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. The winners of the 2019 award are: soprano Tori Adams of Minneapolis, Minnesota; saxophonist Avery Dixon of Riverdale, Georgia; pianist Kasyfi Kalyasyena of Jakarta, Indonesia; pianist José André Montaño of Washington, DC; and singer/songwriter Maya Wagner of Hillsborough, New Jersey.

Based in Minneapolis, soprano Tori Tedeschi Adams, age 22, is in her fifth year at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Her most recent performances include Miles in Turn of the Screw and Constance in Dialogues de Carmélites with Oberlin Opera Theater and Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel with LAH-SOW Minneapolis Opera Workshop. In past summers, Adams has been a Young Artist at Songfest and the Oberlin in Italy program where she sang Bianca in La Rondine. Other notable performances include the title role in Griffelkin by Lucas Foss with Project Opera and roles with the Minnesota Opera in the world premiere productions of The Shining, Doubt, and The Giver. She is pursuing her singing career while living with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that causes hypermobility, chronic pain, among other symptoms.

Many people know Blessing Offor from his impressive appearances on the television shows The Voice and Platinum Hit. But before television audiences fell in love with him, Offor was a 2010 VSA International Young Soloists Award winner for his piano and vocal skills. Today, the Nashville-based musician is still writing and performing his infectious original songs, and urges other emerging artists with disabilities to decide to be the best at their artistic practice with “no qualifiers.”

What is your area(s) of artistic practice?
Music: songwriting, singing, multi-instrumentalist