Piano Faculty
Miroslav BREJCHA studied piano at The Academy of Music and Arts in Prague as the student of Professors Ivan Moravec and Jan Panenka and completed his postgraduate harpsichord course under Professor Zuzana Ruzickova. He continued in his harpsichord studies in Paris during his two-year stay in the class of Professor Huguette Dreyfus from where he graduated with the diploma Prix d´Excellence avec Felicitations. He concluded his foreign studies with a one-year scholarship at the Mozarteum in Salzburg in the class of Professor Kenneth Gilbert. Mr. Brejcha has won a number of awards including Second Prize in The Chopin Piano Competition in Marianske Lazne and Second Prize in The Mozart Competition in Prague. As a soloist and chamber music player, he has performed both at home and abroad (France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Switzerland and USA). He has recorded for Czech Radio, Czech Television, ORF and Panton. Mr. Brejcha has been a Professor of Piano at The Conservatory in Pilsen since 1985 and a number of his students have earned significant awards in national and international piano competitions. Since 2000, he has been the Director of The Pilsen Conservatory and the Chairman of The International Smetana Piano Competition. |
Katherine COLLIER has had a distinguished and versatile career as a soloist, chamber musician, and accompanist. After her early training in Texas, she studied piano with Cecile Genhart and accompanying with Brooks Smith. She was unanimously awarded the Performer's Certificate at Eastman.
Professor Collier was the first prizewinner of the National Young Artist's Competition, the Cliburn Scholarship Competition, and was the recipient of a Rockefeller Award. She won a Kemper Educational Grant to study at the Royal College of Music in London, England. Ms. Collier has been soloist with orchestras in Cincinnati, Dallas, Eastman-Rochester, Houston. She is an active collaborator with many renowned musicians including Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Ani Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Andrés Cárdenes, Erling Bengtsson, David Shifrin, and members of the Tokyo, Emerson, Cleveland, Orion, Vermeer, Miami, Shanghai, and Ying Quartets. She has performed around the world and appeared at recital halls in Europe such as Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room (Southbank) in London, the Concertgebouw, the Brahms-Saal, and the Konzertsaal der Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik. She has presented concerts at Merkin Hall, the Phillips Collection, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, and the Y Music Society in Pittsburgh. She performs at the Aspen Music Festival, Interlochen, Meadowmount, and Skaneateles. As an accompanist, Ms. Collier worked in the studios of Dorothy Delay at Aspen and Nathan Milstein and the BBC in London. Ms. Collier tours extensively with her husband, violist Yizhak Schotten. They are founders and music directors of the Maui Classical Music Festival in Hawaii and music directors of the Strings in the Mountains Festival in Steamboat Springs. Ms. Collier appears with her husband on four compact discs on Crystal Records and has recorded with other artists on the Pandora, Pearl, Crystal, and Centaur labels. Ms. Collier previously taught at the Universities of Washington, Northern Kentucky, and Wyoming. Currently she is Lecturer of Collaborative Piano at the University of Michigan School of Music. |
Arthur Greene studied at Juilliard with Martin Canin, who had been an assistant to Rhosina Lhevinne. Mr. Greene was a Gold Medal winner in The William Kapell and Gina Bachauer International Piano Competitions, and a top laureate at The Busoni International Competition. He has performed the complete solo piano works of Johannes Brahms in a series of six programs in Boston. He recorded the Complete Etudes of Alexander Scriabin for Supraphon. He has performed the Ten Sonata Cycle of Alexander Scriabin in Sofia, Kiev, Salt Lake City, and other venues. He has recorded together with his wife, violinist Solomia Soroka, the Violin-Piano Sonatas of William Bolcom, and the Violin-Piano Sonatas of Nikolai Roslavets, both for Naxos. He recently gave the Ann Arbor, Michigan premiere of John Corigliano's Piano Concerto with The University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, Kenneth Kiesler conducting. Some of the orchestras Mr. Greene has performed with include The Philadelphia Orchestra, The San Francisco, Utah and National Symphonies, The Czech National Symphony, The Tokyo Symphony, and The National Symphony of Ukraine. He has played recitals in Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Moscow's Rachmaninov Hall, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Lisbon Sao Paulo Opera House, Hong Kong City Hall and concert houses in Shanghai and Beijing. He was an Artistic Ambassador to Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia for the United States Information Agency and has toured Japan twelve times. His current students include prizewinners in international competitions, and his former students hold important teaching posts throughout the United States. |
Dr. SILVERMAN has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and chamber musician. Among his appearances were six recitals at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and seven performances in Carnegie Recital Hall. He toured Korea, Singapore and Taiwan performing televised
concerts, conducting master classes and presenting lecture-demonstrations on the traditions of romantic pianism and interpretation.
In 1983, Marc Silverman founded the Carnegie Trio with two other soloists. In addition to their international touring and residences at summer festivals, they have recorded works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Ravel. As a soloist, Dr. Silverman has recorded twentieth-century works in RCA’s Studio A for international release. He is an award winner of the Kapell International Competition, the Gina Bachauer Competition and the Kosciusko Foundation Competition. He is quoted frequently in publications, including Chamber Music America, Piano and Keyboard Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Korean monthly, Eumagchoonchu. In September 1999, he was named international consultant to the Nanyang Academy, Singapore’s flagship international arts institution. Dr. Silverman has been chairman of the piano department at the Manhattan School of Music since 1989 and has coordinated piano chamber music at the school since 1985. He has taught students from over thirty countries and from every continent, and his students have been the recipients of numerous international awards and honors. |
MASTER CLASSES
Much in demand as a soloist throughout the world, the distinguished Czech pianist Ivan KLÁNSKÝ, embarked on an international career after winning first prize in the Bolzano International Piano Competition in 1967. He was also a prizewinner at the international piano competitions in Naples, Leipzig, Barcelona and Santander and finalist at the 8th International Chopin Piano Competition in 1970. An extremely versatile musician, his repertoire ranges from the baroque to the contemporary.
A Graduate of the Music Academy in Prague, he was the pupil of Valentina Kamenikova and Frantisek Rauch. He made numerous concert tours throughout Europe, Japan, the USA, Canada, as well as in Asia and Africa. Currently, he is Professor and head the Piano Department at the Music Academy in Prague and at the Conservatory in Lucerne. His many recordings include the complete piano music of Smetana. |
Composition/Piano
Bright SHENG composer, conductor, and pianist, studied with Leonard Bernstein, George Perle, Hugo Weisgall, Chou Wen-Chung, and Jack Beeson.
In 1999, Mr. Sheng received a special commission from the White House to create a new work for a state dinner, hosted by the president, honoring the Chinese Premiere Zhou Rongji. In 2001, he was named a MacArthur Fellow with a cash prize of $500,000. Mr. Sheng has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Naumberg Foundation, Copland Foundation, Michigan Arts Award and a Rackham fellowship and a fellowship from the Institute for the Humanities from the University of Michigan. He has worked with distinguished musicians including Leonard Bernstein, Christoph Eschenbach, Kurt Masur, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, Gerard Schwarz, David Zinman, Neeme Jarvi, David Robertson, Robert Spano, Marin Alsop, Eiji Oue, Bramwell Tovey, Jeffery Kahane, Thomas Dasgaard, Hugh Wolff, Arthur Fagen, Jahja Lin, Sakari Oramo, Muhai Tang, Carl St. Clair, Shui Lan, Yo Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Peter Serkin, Yefim Brofman, Evelyn Glennie, Lynn Harrell, Richard Stoltzman, Edgar Meyer, Truls Mork, Jane Eaglen, Elisabeth Futral, Joseph Kaiser, and Lauren Flanigan. Professor Sheng has appeared as solo pianist and conductor with the San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra (Russia), Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra (Germany), Hong Kong Philharmonic, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, and China National Symphony, among others, and has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the Tanglewood Music Center. He has also collaborated with such eminent ensembles and individuals as the Emerson Quartet, Takacs Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, St. Petersburg Quartet, Colin Graham (librettist and stage director), Jude Kelly (stage director), Ong Keng Sen (stage director), David Henry Hwang (playwright/librettist), Andrew Porter (librettist), Helgi Tomasson (choreographer), Peter Martins (choreographer), Christopher Wheeldon (choreographer), and Will Tuckett (choreographer). Mr. Sheng's music is exclusively published by G. Schirmer, Inc. and records on the Sony Classical, Naxos, Telarc, Delos, Koch International, New World, and Grammofon AB BI labels. |