Spring is the season for hearing talented young musicians at their best. It’s when honor bands and choirs meet, when music majors ending their college careers perform senior recitals, and when competitions identify budding soloists.

Earlier this month, a cellist from Nashville’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Magnet High School took the top award at the Nashville Symphony’s Curb Concerto Competition. As part of her prize, ninth grader Jocelyn Hartley will be the featured soloist in a “side-by-side” concert that mixes Nashville Symphony professionals with the musicians of the Curb Youth Symphony on May 19.

This weekend, the focus is on young pianists. For the third time in five years, the Steinway Society of Nashville is offering a substantial college scholarship to the winner of its Nashville International Piano Competition. Fifteen finalists were chosen from video submissions; all will perform at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music for a panel of judges from Blair, Belmont University and Lipscomb University. First place wins $10,000 towards college music studies, as long as they go to a college or university in Tennessee. All fifteen performances will be live-streamed online, starting at 1pm Saturday.

Spring also offers a chance to hear up-and-coming professional singers. Each year, Nashville Opera’s Mary Ragland Young Artists concludes the post-graduate training program with roles in a mainstage production. Next week, soprano Lacy Sauter , mezzo-soprano Katherine Sanford and tenor Todd Barnhill  will perform the roles of Lucy, Prince Orlofsky and Dr. Blind in Die  Fledermaus .