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Performing arts stars of the future will again flock to Tauranga, when the Mazda Foundation National Young Performer Awards, are staged at Baycourt Community and Arts Centre on the 18th and 19th October 2008.

There is real incentive for the best young performers from throughout the country to compete at the prestigious event. A total prize package of forty thousand dollars is on offer with $24,000 distributed courtesy of the Mazda Foundation tuition scholarships. The 2008 Awards will see 130 young people aged between 15 and 25, from all corners of New Zealand, compete in one (or occasionally two) of the four disciplines being piano, vocal, ballet and tap dancing. Competitors will perform, and be critiqued, by internationally renowned adjudicators including Michael Houstoun (piano) and Patricia Wright (vocal). This years young performers will follow in the footsteps of some of the most promising performing artists seen in this country for many years. Lyric Soprano, Madeleine Pierard, (winner of the 2004 NYPA) has gone on to receive rave reviews here in New Zealand and overseas, most recently performing Canteloube with NZSO National Youth Orchestra and Jacques Lacombe. Other past winners include Jun Bouterey-Ishido (2004 Piano, 2005 Instrumental), recent winner of the KeriKeri National Piano Competition and Tauranga dancer, Ty King-Wall (2002 Ballet) who was accepted into the Australian Ballet in 2006 and promoted to Coryphe in 2007. The National Young Performer Awards were first held in 1977 with the aim of providing performing arts students the same opportunities as their sporting peers - to compete in a genuine national event. The multi discipline awards now represent all the art forms traditionally covered in the competitions movement, and are considered the pinnacle of achievement, for the best young performers in the country.