CORE FACULTY

DAVID CARTLEDGE teaches on the Indiana University piano faculty and currently serves as associate chair of the piano department.  He has appeared in North America, Great Britain and Australia as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra and chamber musician.  He is a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Trust Award and has been awarded grants from the Ian Potter and George Alexander Foundations.  He holds degrees from the Australian National University and Indiana University.

CHRISTOPHER HARDING is Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Michigan. The winner of many national and international competitions, he performs across North America and Asia as a recitalist and soloist with such orchestras as the National and St. Louis Symphonies. A graduate and former faculty member of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, he is a frequent guest artist/teacher, lecturer, and adjudicator.

DANIEL SCHENE, director of the Keyboard Studies Program at Webster University (St. Louis), combines a busy schedule of concert engagements with teaching piano performance. He has appeared throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia as a recitalist and chamber musician, collaborating with cellist Zara Nelsova among others. Mr. Schene has made a special study of playing motions as a source of, and a solution to, technical problems. He records for CRI

ADJUNCT FACULTY

MATTHEW GIANFORTE, a pianist native of Chicago, received his Bachelor of Music degree at The Catholic University of America, where he studied with Marilyn Neeley. He continued his studies with Karen Shaw at Indiana University, where he earned the Master of Music degree, and where he currently is completing the Doctor of Music degree in Piano Performance. Mr. Gianforte has served as both an Associate Instructor in Piano and as the Coordinator of Piano Accompanying at Indiana University, and currently serves on the faculty of the IU Young Pianists Program, IU Piano Academy, and the DePauw University School of Music. A top prize winner in the 2004 Indianapolis Matinee Musicale competition, he has appeared across the United States as both a soloist and collaborator.

                                          MASTER CLASS GUEST FACULTY

A prize winner and later juror in the Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and Marguerite Long competitions, Professor Auer has recorded for RCA Japan, Toshiba EMI, Erato, Camerata, TownHall, and other labels.

EVELYNE BRANCART is currently Professor of Music (Piano) at Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington and Chair of the Piano Department since August 2001.  Previous teaching positions include The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, Rice University in Houston, San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Aspen Summer Music School, where she innovated a seminar devoted to Chopin and Liszt Etudes.  Her conference on the Chopin Etudes: "The Hand as a Source of Inspiration" and her seminar: "The Art of Playing the Piano" as well as "Deconstruction for Reconstruction" (Reflections on J.S.Bach) have had tremendous success amongst pianists, piano teachers, amateurs and musicians.

Evelyne Brancart was born in Belgium where she studied 10 years with the great Spanish master Eduardo del Pueyo and later with Maria Curcio, Leon Fleisher and Menahem Pressler.  She was a prizewinner in many international competitions including: Queen Elisabeth-Belgium, (where she returned as a judge in 1999) Montreal, Viotti-Italy, Munich  (with her duo partner cellist Anthony Ross) and Gina Bacchauer-Salt Lake City.  She played many recitals all over Europe (Wigmore, Queen Elisabeth…) and made several recordings with BBC orchestras before moving to the States in 1980.  She made her debut in Alice Tully Hall in 1982 with a much-noted performance of Chopin 24 etudes and Brahms Paganini Variations.

Evelyne Brancart is very involved in Chamber Music. Between 1986 and 1990 she was a member of the Seraphim Trio with whom she performed all Beethoven Piano Trios.  More recently she performed all violin and cello Beethoven sonatas. She has appeared with artists like Tony Ross, Gary Hoffman, Miriam Fried, Frederico Agostini, Arnold Steinhardt, Atar Arad and  with the Cleveland, Vermeer and Orion Quartets at the Ravinia Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Da Camera  (Houston), Leicester Music Festival in England, Mozart Festival in Lille France, Music at the Red Sea in Israel, Perry Sound and Sainte-Petronille in Canada, Bay Chamber in Maine, Close Encounters with Music in Florida and the Festival D'Horrues in Belgium.  During the 2005-06 season, Evelyne  Brancart gave numerous recitals and master classes through Europe, Asia and South America.

Her live performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto K.467 was recorded and released by Deutsche Gramophon. Brahms-Paganini Variations and Liszt-Paganini Etudes (Koch Discover) Elliot Carter's sonata for cello and piano and Rachmaninoff's Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19, with cellist Anthony Ross (Boston Records). Other recordings with Teldec and Decca. Chopin's 24 Etudes with 24 cooking recipes will soon be available on RIAX.

JOSEPH KALICHSTEIN, acclaimed for the heartfelt intensity and technical mastery of his playing, pianistenthralls audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe, winning equal praise as orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. He is also the first Chamber Music Advisor to the Kennedy Center, an appointment that grew out of his close association with the Center over many seasons. He has given solo recitals there, appeared many times with the National Symphony Orchestra, and played a major role in chamber music festivals devoted to Brahms and Beethoven.  In 2004 Mr. Kalichstein was featured with the National Symphony at its season-opening concert commemorating Music Director Leonard Slatkin’s 60th birthday; he has also participated  in the Ravinia Festival’s Mozart celebration, performing two of the piano concerti with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under James Conlon, Ravinia’s new music director.

His recent engagements include performances with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Boston Symphony,the London Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony and return tours to Japan, Germany and Scandinavia. He continues to record and to play in music capitals worldwide with the famed Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson piano trio, with whom he appeared in the opening month’s festivities of Carnegie’s new Zankel Hall.  In March 2006, an emotional and musical highlight for Mr. Kalichstein: a special tour as soloist with the Juilliard orchestra under James DePriest, helping to celebrate his alma mater’s 100th birthday!  A faculty member at Juilliard since 1983 in piano and chamber music, he was recently appointed holder of Juilliard's first endowed chair in Chamber Music Studies.

Born in Tel Aviv, Kalichstein came to the United States in 1962. His principal teachers included Joshua Shor in Israel and Edward Steuermann and Ilona Kabos at The Juilliard School.  Prior to his 1969 Leventritt Award victory, he won the Young Concert Artists Auditions.  As a result, he gave a heralded New York recital debut and, at the invitation of Leonard Bernstein, performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with the New York Philharmonic in a nationally televised concert.  Mr. Kalichstein has appeared with most of the major orchestras of the U.S. and Europe, collaborating with such celebrated conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Christoph von Dohnányi, Zubin Mehta,  Leonard Slatkin and the late George Szell and Erich Leinsdorf.  He has been enthusiastically received at the Helsinki, Edinburgh, Aspen, Prague, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Salzburg, and Verbier festivals.  A favorite of New York concertgoers, Mr. Kalichstein has appeared in Carnegie Hall as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Leipzig Chmaber Orchestra and with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, in addition to giving several recitals on Carnegie Hall’s “Keyboard Virtuosi” series.  He has collaborated with some of the world's great string quartets including the Emerson, Guarnieri and Juillard quartets.   He has recorded for Vox, Arabesque, Chandos, Nimbus, Vanguard and Koch International Records.  Recent releases include “The Romantic Piano,” on Audiofon, a two-disc set featuring works of C.P.E. Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schubert; and a performance of the Piano Concerto of Ellen Taafe Zwillich for Koch International, which is in the process of recording Zwilich's complete output.

KAREN SHAW, professor of piano at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, has been widely acclaimed as an interpreter of authority and compelling emotional power. Her New York debut as winner of the Concert Artists Guild Award prompted unusual acclaim from New York Times critic Donal Henahan.  Her London and Berlin debuts were received with equal praise and enthusiasm.  Since then the artist has distinguished herself in numerous performances across the United States, Europe,Canada and the Far East, appearing as both recitalist and soloist with orchestra.  

 In a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall,  Ms. Shaw was repeatedly recognized asa “persuasive interpreter of Romantic music” possessing a virtuosity “as dazzling as accurate, and sensitivity tenderly poetic.” (NY Times)  Her performance of Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-tableaux was widely admired for its power, panache, and incontestable authority; her recording of the complete set is still in demand, prompting a reissue on CD of that interpretation, as well as another CD featuring works of Schumann and Scriabin.

Karen Shaw has been performing, teaching, conducting master classes, lecturing and adjudicating competitions for over three decades.  Forming young pianists and assisting them in reaching their career goals has always been a very significant dimension of her career .  Among her numerous pupils are noted performers and successful teachers at every level.

An international figure in the piano world, Skelton regularly appears in prominent music festivals in the States and abroad. He has given countless performances and master classes at colleges and conservatories throughout the world, and is a frequent juror for international piano competitions. Skelton balances his busy career with an international class of prize-winning students at the University of Michigan. He has served on the faculties of Manhattan School of Music, Missouri State University, and is currently Chair of the Piano Department and Director of Doctoral Studies in Piano Performance at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. 

ROBERT WEIRICH has held the Jack Strandberg Missouri Endowed Chair in Piano at the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance since 1998.  His solo performances have taken him to musical centers throughout the country, including Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, Chicago's Orchestra Hall, and to such summer festivals as Tanglewood, Ravinia and Marlboro. International performances include Canada, Europe and the Far East.

He is an avid chamber musician, and was the artistic director of the Skaneateles Festival in New York's Finger Lakes District from 1991 to 1999; during that time the Festival received three Adventuresome Programming Awards from ASCAP and Chamber Music America; attendance more than doubled. His bimonthly column for Clavier Magazine,"Out of the Woods," twice received the Educational Press Achievement Award. He was President of the College Music Society, a 9,000-member national consortium of college and university music faculty (2003-04).  UMKC recently awarded him a Trustees' Faculty Fellowship, the N.T. Veatch Prize for distinguished research and creative activity, and in 2003 the first Muriel McBrien Kaufmann Artistry/Scholarship Award. He has previously taught at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and at Northwestern University. His students have pursued a wide range of successful careers in music, and have won top prizes in such important piano competitions as the 1992 Naumburg Competition (Awadagin Pratt) and the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (Stanislav Ioudenitch).

JERRY WONG has concertized throughout the United States, Europe and Asia in such prestigious settings as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York City, National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., Shriver Hall in Baltimore, Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, National Concert Hall of Taipei and Opera City Hall in Tokyo. In recent seasons, he has given solo recitals at universities, colleges and music teacher’s associations in California, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. Other recent engagements have included appearances with the Kent State University Orchestra, Suburban Symphony, Stow Symphony Orchestra, Humboldt Symphony Orchestra and the Miami String Quartet at Kent/Blossom Music. This season, he toured Asia, performing recitals at Tunghai University and the Tainan University of Art in Taiwan, Yong Sieh Tow Conservatory in Singapore and conducting master classes at the Kinta Music School in Malaysia. His many prizes and awards include the Ibla Grand Prize Competition in Italy, Prix-Ville de Fontainebleau in France (which was personally presented to him by Philippe Entremont), Bartók-Kabalevsky-Prokofiev International Piano Competition and Grace Welsh Competition.

Critics have enthusiastically praised Mr. Wong’s solo and concerto performances. Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Martin Bernheimer described his playing as “eloquent and elegant…(with) passion and introspection…sensitivity and a finely honed sense of style”. The Orange County Register compared him to “a young Murray Perahia,” and described his playing “as a performance which turned the concert into an unforgettable event.” His performances and interviews have been featured on National Public Radio, Finnish National Radio, Radio Video Mediterranean, Nippon Television and the Living & Travel Section of msnbc.com.

Mr. Wong is a graduate of Indiana University, Peabody Conservatory and Manhattan School of Music, where he completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. His major teachers have included Menahem Pressler, Ann Schein, Sara Davis Buechner and Byron Janis. Frequently sought after for lectures, master classes and as adjudicator, he has taught courses at The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music, and is a former faculty member of Humboldt State University and Ithaca College. He presently holds the position of Assistant Professor of Piano at Kent State University.