Two AISL Harrow Talent Awardees from Harrow International School Bangkok have spent the past months on stages from Las Vegas to Wales, and on a national band final in Bangkok. Krittapak Pankrut (Mimi) and Charita Kumworachai (PinnPinn), with Year 9 peers Zen, Konn and Plavarn, also took Best Vote for school group W6 at The Power Band 2026.
Voices that travel, and stay home
This Summer and Autumn, Mimi and PinnPinn, have given that idea a very public shape: international medals and finalist places, a Carnegie Hall date, and a national band result earned with friends.
On 27 September 2026, W6 — Mimi, PinnPinn, and YearZen (Year 9), Konn (Year 9) and Plavarn So (Year 9) — won Best Vote at the Grand Final of The Power Band 2026 in Bangkok. The competition is Thailand’s national school band contest. Season 6 drew 284 bands from across the country. Best Vote is the audience’s verdict: five pupils, one peer group, and a room that chose them.
“Best Vote at The Power Band final was not a solo result,” Mimi and PinnPinn said. “The audience chose the group. That is the award we wanted to bring back to school.”
Mimi: from Las Vegas and Wales to a singing programme at home
In recent months Mimi has competed on two of the better-known international stages for young performers.
At the World Championship of Performing Arts (WCOPA) 2026 in Las Vegas, held alongside contestants representing 53 countries, she was awarded two gold, three silver and three bronze medals. WCOPA styles itself as a world championship for performing arts; a medal haul of that spread means she was placed across several categories, not a single event.
She then reached the vocal finals of the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod 2026 in Wales, finishing among 16 finalists. Llangollen’s Eisteddfod is one of the longest-running international music festivals in the United Kingdom; a vocal final there is a narrow field. She has also been selected for the Grand Finals of Asia Student Arts 2026 in Hong Kong, set for November 2026.
Between those dates she is building work that does not depend on a judging panel. She is creating a singing programme for people who stutter, and preparing a charity concert at school in December 2026. The competition calendar and the school concert are being treated as the same kind of job: use the voice, then hand it on.
“The medals matter because they mean I was heard in a room full of people who had also earned their place,” Mimi said. “What I want next is bigger: Changing one’s life with my songs. If the voice only works on a competition stage, it is only doing half its job.”
PinnPinn: Carnegie Hall, then the songs older listeners already know
PinnPinn was named first-prize winner in piano at the 2026 New York Golden Classical Music Awards International Competition. First prize brings a Winner’s Recital at Carnegie Hall on 15 December 2026. For a school pianist, that date is a fixed point: a New York hall, a winner’s programme, and the work between now and then.
She has also started practising and recording instrumental Thai urban music from the 1950s to the 1970s. The project is aimed mainly at elderly Thai adults living with conditions such as apathy. Familiar instrumental music is associated, in clinical and music-therapy research, with comfort, recognition and engagement for older listeners; the recordings are being made with that use in mind, not as a nostalgia exercise for its own sake. The same pupil who will play in New York in December is, in Bangkok, rebuilding a repertoire her grandparents’ generation would recognise.
