Congratulations!!!

We’re very excited to announce the 2012 final grand prize winners for the Lee Ritenour/Dave Grusin Rhythm Section Competition!

The voting turned out to be incredibly close, sometimes separated by only one vote.

We’re happy to announce we have 2 grand prize winners in the keyboard competition:

DEMETRIUS NABORS & HANS DE WILD

Demetrius Nabors – Video #1 | Video #2

Hans De Wild – Video #1 | Video #2

The grand prize winner of the bass competition: MICHAEL FEINBERG

Video #1 | Video #2

The grand prize winner of the drum competition: SELIM MUNIR

Video #1 | Video #2

Dave Grusin and I sincerely congratulate all the finalists from the 2012 Rhythm Section competition!

We commend everyone who applied and even though this was a “competition” we look at it as an opportunity for exposure, challenges, and a chance to fine-tune your craft to present in a professional manner. People from 110 countries viewed the website & we had registrants from 58 countries. Dave & I would like to thank our incredible Advisory Board for taking their valuable time listening to all the videos that made it to the finals. I would also like to thank our 6 String Theory Rhythm Section Staff and Sponsors for making this all possible and helping out tremendously with the preliminary rounds.

A note about the voting: Thanks to modern technology and specifically YouTube, our board was able to watch, listen and vote on everyone’s videos that were submitted from around the world. And in many cases our judges were touring and watching your videos from time zones spanning the globe!

The voting was incredibly tight and all of our finalists plus many, many others who applied, ended very high up on our lists. This is almost an impossible mission to pick only one player on each instrument. Even our distinguished all-star judges had wide opinions about the contestants. In the end, we are constantly reminded that music is art and very subjective. Nonetheless, we had some amazing talent this year & we congratulate all of our contestants who made it to the semi-final & final rounds as well as grand prize winners!

All 21 rhythm player finalists are considered for the Berklee College of Music scholarships, if interested and fit the criteria. Berklee will contact finalists this summer along with the guitar competition semi-finalists regarding applying.

CONGRATULATIONS!! ~ Lee Ritenour & Dave Grusin

Below are the names and videos of the top 6 in each instrument (except keyboards, where we had tie for grand prize). The NAMES ARE LISTED ALPHABETICALLY BY FIRST NAME, NOT BY RANKING.

KEYBOARDS:

Jamel Bruner: Video #1 | Video #2

Jonathan Durham: Video #1 | Video #2

Kevin Judd: Video #1 | Video #2

Mateo Jimenez: Video #1

Ryan Skiles: Video #1 | Video #2

BASS:

Ben Hands: Video #1 | Video #2

Enzo Pedone: Video #1 | Video #2

Jeremy Sauer: Video #1 | Video #2

Joe Duran: Video #1 | Video #2

Scott Hardy: Video #1 | Video #2