Final Round

Jerome LowenthalJerome Lowenthal

Juilliard School 

Jerome Lowenthal has been a prominent presence in the international piano world for more than a half-century. He studied with Olga Samaroff-Stokowski in his native Philadelphia, William Kapell and Eduard Steuermann at the Juilliard School in New York, and Alfred Cortot at the  École Normale de Musique de Paris in Paris, France. Meanwhile, he traveled annually to Los Angeles for coachings with Artur Rubinstein. After winning prizes in three international competitions (Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy in 1957; Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels in 1960; and Darmstadt International Chopin Piano Competition), he moved to Jerusalem where, for three years, he played, taught and lectured.

Jerome Lowenthal made his debut at the age of thirteen with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Returning to the USA from Jerusalem in 1963, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic  Orchestra, playing  Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2. Since then, he has performed more-or-less everywhere, from the Aleutians to Zagreb. Conductors with whom he has appeared as a soloist include Daniel Barenboim, Seiji Ozawa, Michael Tilson Thomas, Yuri Temirkanov, and Leonard Slatkin, as well as such giants of the past as Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, Pierre Monteux, and Leopold Stokowski. He has performed in a large number of chamber music festivals and collaborated in concerts with violinist Itzhak Perlman (playing sonatas), cellist Nathaniel Rosen, and pianists Ronit Amir (his late wife),
Ursula Oppens, and Carmel Lowenthal (his daughter), as well as quintets with the Lark Quartet, Avalon Quartet, and Shanghai Quartet.

Jerome Lowenthal is recognized as a specialist of Franz Liszt, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Béla Bartók, and more generally of virtuoso and late romantic music. His recordings include piano concertos by F. Liszt with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the complete Tchaikovsky concerto cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra. He has an extensive repertoire, including 63 performed piano concerti, and is the dedicatee of many new works and has unearthed some rare romantic piano works, such as the F. Liszt’s Third Piano Concerto edited by his former student Jay Rosenblatt. He continues to fascinate audiences, who find in his playing a youthful intensity and an eloquence born of life experience. He is a virtuoso of the fingers and the emotions.

Jerome Lowenthal has recorded for numerous record labels, including RCA, Columbia, and Arabesque, and is in the process of recording the complete Années de Pèlerinage of F. Liszt for Bridge Records. He has recently recorded the Beethoven Fourth Concerto with cadenzas by eleven different composers. His other recordings include concerti by Tschaikovsky and F. Liszt, solo works by Sinding and B. Bartók, and chamber music by Arensky and Taneyev.

Jerome Lowenthal is a professor of piano at the Juilliard School in New York since 1991, where he was also chair of the piano department. Additionally, Lowenthal is on the faculty at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California since 1970. He has worked with an extraordinary number of gifted pianists, whom he encourages to understand the music they play in a wide aesthetic and cultural perspective and to project it with the freedom which that perspective allows. Besides, he gives master classes in North America, Europe, and Asia, He is a frequent judge in international piano competitions, such as the Cliburn, Tschaikowsky, Rubinstein, Horowitz, and Bachauer piano competitions, to name a few.. Lowenthal recently received an honorary doctorate from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

John PerryJohn Perry

Royal Conservatory of Music

John Perry, distinguished artist and teacher, earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Eastman School of Music where he was a student of Cecile Genhart.  During those summers, he worked with the eminent Frank Mannheimer.  Recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, he continued studies in Europe for four years where he worked with Wladyslav Kedra, Polish concert artist and professor at the Akademie für Musik in Vienna, and Carlo Zecchi, renowned conductor, pianist, and head of the piano department at the Santa Cecilia Academy of Music in Rome.

Mr. Perry has won numerous awards including the highest prizes in both the Busoni and Viotti international piano competitions in Italy and special honors at the Marguerite Long International Competition in Paris. Since then he has performed extensively throughout Europe and North America to great critical acclaim. Also a respected chamber musician, Mr. Perry has collaborated with some of the finest instrumentalists in the world.

He also enjoys an international reputation as a teacher, presenting master classes throughout the world. He often is a jury member at some of the most prestigious international piano competitions. His students have been prize winners in most major competitions and include two first-prize winners in the Rubinstein, four first-prize winners in the Music Teacher’s National Association national competition, and first-prize winners in the Naumburg National Chopin competition, the Cleveland Competition, Beethoven Foundation competition, the Federated Music Clubs, and the YKA, AMSC, and YMF competitions, and finalists in the Chopin International in Warsaw, the Van Cliburn, the Queen Elisabeth, Leeds, Dublin, Busoni, Viotti and the Three Rivers competitions.

Mr. Perry is professor at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, professor of piano at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, and Professor Emeritus of the USC Thornton School of Music.  In addition, he recently founded a music school, John Perry Academy of Music in Los Angeles, where he serves as Artistic Director.  During the summer he is artist professor at the Lake Como International Piano Academy, the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada, the Sarasota Music Festival in Florida, the Orford Music Festival in Quebec, the Morningside Music Bridge Program in Calgary, Alberta, the Internationaler Klaviersommer Cochem, Germany, the International Music Festival in Perugia, Italy, the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy, Montecito International Music Festival in Santa Barbara, and the John Perry Academy Summer Piano Festival in California.  In January he was the main guest artist at the Sydney Piano Festival in Australia.

His recordings are available on the Telefunken, Musical Heritage Society, CBC, ACA and Fox labels. 

Pamela Mia Paul Pamela Mia Paul 

University of North Texas

Pamela Mia Paul is both a brilliant performer and a deeply dedicated teacher. On stage, she has performed with the world’s great orchestras. She has given concerts throughout the United States, and in Europe, the People’s Republic of China, South Korea and Turkey both as soloist and as chamber musician. In the studio, or in the setting of a masterclass, she is an internationally sought-after pedagogue whose students hold teaching positions throughout the United States and Asia, and who have participated in and won competitions including the Nina Widemann Competition and Naumburg International Piano Competition. Ms. Paul has commissioned and premiered works for the piano; Robert Beaser’s Piano Concerto, which was written for her, had its world premiere in the United States with the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin, and in Europe with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic under the baton of American conductor Richard Dufallo. The Beaser Concerto had its New York premiere in 1992 at Carnegie Hall, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the American Composers Orchestra. In 2012 Ms. Paul commissioned a concerto for piano and symphonic winds from Steven Bryant. The concerto was premiered with the UNT Wind Symphony conducted by Eugene Migliaro Corporon and recorded for release on the Klavier label in December 2012. Her most recent commission was for a concerto for piano and full Wind Symphony, from composer Richard Sortomme. This work received its premiere with the UNT Wind Symphony in February of 2019 under the direction of Daniel Cook.

Miss Paul has received critical acclaim for her appearances with orchestras in the United States and Europe, where her interpretations of both standard repertoire and twentieth-century piano concertos have garnered consistent critical praise.

Miss Paul's European orchestral appearances include the Vienna ORF Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Berlin Stadskapelle, and Dutch Radio Symphony; her U.S. orchestral appearances include those with the New York Philharmonic, symphonies of Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Houston, American Composers Orchestra, Boston Pops, New York Pops, Minnesota Orchestra, and Caramoor Festival Orchestra. In both orchestral performances and recitals, Ms. Paul has appeared in the world’s major concert halls including Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, and the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.

As a chamber musician, she has been an invited guest artist at the Salzburg and Bregenz festivals in Austria, Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, and Music Mountain in Connecticut. Quartets with which she has performed include the Cassatt, Penderecki, Borromeo, Chester, Orlando, Leontovich, Miro, DaPonte and St. Petersburg.

Summer programs at which Ms. Paul has taught include the Prague International Master Classes, The Institute for Strings, and the Vienna International Piano Academy. She has presented masterclasses in Europe, the People’s Republic of China, Turkey, South Korea, and throughout the United States. Pamela Mia Paul received the doctor of musical arts, master of music, and bachelor of music degrees from the Juilliard School. Dr. Paul was selected as one of five judges for the international screening jury of the 2017 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

She is currently regents professor of piano at the University of North Texas and is a Steinway artist.

Spencer MyerSpencer Myer

Indiana University

Lauded for “superb playing” and “poised, alert musicianship” by the Boston Globe, and labeled “definitely a man to watch” by London’s The Independent, American pianist Spencer Myer is one of the most respected and sought-after artists on today’s concert stage.

Spencer Myer’s orchestral, recital and chamber music performances have been heard throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa and Asia. He has been soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Boise, Dayton, Rhode Island, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestras, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Baton Rouge, Indianapolis, Knoxville, New Haven, Omaha, Phoenix, Santa Fe and Tucson Symphony Orchestras, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Mexico’s Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco and Beijing’s China National Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with, among others, conductors Michael Christie, Leslie B. Dunner, Arthur Fagen, Robert Franz, Bernhard Gueller, Jacques Lacombe, Jahja Ling, Rossen Milanov, Timothy Muffitt, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Kevin Rhodes, Lucas Richman, Steven Smith, Thomas Wilkins and Victor Yampolsky. His 2005 recital/orchestral tour of South Africa included a performance of the five piano concerti of Beethoven with the Chamber Orchestra of South Africa, followed by six return orchestra and recital tours.

Spencer Myer’s recital appearances have been presented in New York City’s Weill Recital Hall, 92nd Street Y and Steinway Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and London’s Wigmore Hall, while many of his performances have been broadcast on WQXR (New York City), WHYY (Philadelphia), WCLV (Cleveland) and WFMT (Chicago). An in-demand chamber musician, he has appeared numerous summers at the Lev Aronson Legacy Festival in Dallas with cellists Lynn Harrell, Ralph Kirshbaum, Amit Peled and Brian Thornton, and has enjoyed a recurring partnership for over a decade with the Miami String Quartet at the Kent/Blossom Music Festival.  Other artistic partners have included clarinetist David Shifrin, sopranos Nicole Cabell, Martha Guth and Erin Wall, the Jupiter and Pacifica String Quartets and the Dorian Wind Quintet.

Spencer Myer’s career was launched with three important prizes: First Prize in the 2004 UNISA International Piano Competition in South Africa, the 2006 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship from the American Pianists Association and the Gold Medal from the 2008 New Orleans International Piano Competition. He is also a laureate of the 2007 William Kapell, 2005 Cleveland and 2005 Busoni International Piano Competitions. He enjoys an esteemed reputation as a vocal collaborator since winning the 2000 Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition. Mr. Myer was a member of Astral Artists’ performance roster from 2003-2010.

A renowned pedagogue, Spencer Myer is currently Associate Professor of Piano at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he received the 2024 Trustees Teaching Award.  Previously, he has served as a guest faculty at the Oberlin and Baldwin-Wallace Conservatories of Music, and was a member of the Piano Faculty of Boston’s Longy School of Music of Bard College from 2016 to 2022.  He currently serves on the Board of New York’s Musicians Foundation and Brooklyn Art Song Society.

Spencer Myer’s debut CD for harmonia mundi usa - solo music of Busoni, Copland, Debussy and Kohs - was released in the fall of 2007 to critical acclaim by Fanfare and Gramophone magazines. Mr. Myer has released five recordings on the Steinway & Sons label since 2017:  Piano Rags of William Bolcom, three discs with cellist Brian Thornton encompassing cello/piano repertoire of Brahms, Debussy and Schumann, and most recently Chopin’s Four Impromptus.        

Spencer Myer is a Steinway Artist.

www.spencermyer.com

Preliminary Judges

Ian HobsonIan Hobson

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

A native of Wolverhampton, England, Ian Hobson is recognized throughout the world for his masterful performances of the Romantic repertoire, his deft and idiomatic readings of neglected piano scores old and new, and his assured conducting from both the piano and the podium. Mr. Hobson is also renowned as a dedicated scholar and educator, who has pioneered renewed interest in the music of lesser-known masters Johann Hummel and Ignaz Moscheles. He is also an effective advocate of works written expressly for him by several of today’s noted composers, including John Gardner, Benjamin Lees, David Liptak, Alan Ridout and Roberto Sierra.

As guest soloist, Mr. Hobson appears regularly with the world’s major orchestras in the United States including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and The Philadelphia Orchestra. Abroad, he has been heard with Great Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The London Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Hallé Orchestra, ORD-Vienna, Orchester der Beethovenhalle, Moscow Chopin Orchestra, Israeli Sinfonietta and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Active in the recording studio, Mr. Hobson has been engaged in recording a 16-volume collection of the complete works of Chopin for the Zephyr label. This edition includes approximately 45 minutes of Chopin music never before recorded, making Mr. Hobson the first ever to record the composer’s entire oeuvre as a single artist. Ian Hobson presented a 10-recital series devoted to the 200th anniversary of the Romantic Era’s two greatest composers for the piano: Chopin and Schumann, at New York City’s Dicapo Opera Theatre. In the 2011-12 season Ian Hobson presented the complete solo piano works of Robert Schumann in Urbana, Illinois.

Increasingly, Mr. Hobson is in demand as a conductor, particularly for performances in which he doubles as a pianist. He made his debut in this capacity in 1996 with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, and has subsequently appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra, Poland’s Sinfonia Varsovia (at Carnegie Hall) and Pomeranian Philharmonic and Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra of Israel, among others.

Ian Hobson is also active as an opera conductor, with a repertoire that encompasses works by Cimarosa and Pergolesi, Mozart and Beethoven, and Johann and Richard Strauss. In 1997, he conducted John Philip Sousa’s comic opera, El Capitan, in a newly restored version with Sinfonia da Camera and a stellar cast of young singers. A fervent advocate of George Enescu’s music, he conducted and recorded the 2005 North American première of the operatic masterpiece, Oedipe, in a semi-staged version performed by Sinfonia da Camera on the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death.

An artist of prodigious energy and resource, Mr. Hobson has amassed a discography of over 60 releases. In the dual role of pianist/conductor, he and the Sinfonia Varsovia  recorded for Zephyr Rachmaninoff’s four piano concerti and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini – a tour de force no other performer has matched.

In addition, Ian Hobson is a much sought-after judge for national and international competitions, and has been a member of numerous juries, among them the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (at the specific request of Mr. Cliburn), the Chopin Competition in Florida, Leeds International Pianoforte Competition (U.K.), Schumann International Competition (Germany) and Arthur Rubinstein Competition (Poland). In 2005, he served as Chairman of the Jury for the Cleveland International Piano Competition and New York City’s Kosciuzsko Competition; in 2008, he served in the same capacity for the New York Piano Competition – to which, renamed New York International Piano Competition, he returned in 2010.

One of the youngest graduates in the history of London’s Royal Academy of Music, Ian Hobson subsequently pursued advanced studies at both Cambridge University and Yale University. He began his international career in 1981 when he won First Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition, after having earned silver medals at both the Arthur Rubinstein and Vienna-Beethoven competitions. Among his distinguished teachers were Sidney Harrison, Ward Davenny, Claude Frank and Menahem Pressler, while, as a conductor, he studied with Otto Werner Mueller, Dennis Russell Davies, Daniel Lewis and Gustav Meier, and worked with Lorin Maazel in Cleveland and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood. Currently, Mr. Hobson is Emeritus Center for Advanced Study and Swanlund Professor of Music at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and will be a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, this fall.

Xun Pan Xun Pan

Millersville University

The highlights of the Chinese-American pianist Xun Pan’s recent chamber music concerts collaborate with the American String Quartet, Hai-Ye Ni, Priscilla Lee, Dara Morales, and the Gabriel Chamber Ensemble. He just finished a 15-city concert tour in 30 days in China in May/June of 2024. As a Steinway Artist, he was inducted into the Steinway & Sons Teacher Hall of Fame in 2023.

Xun received his early musical training from his grandmother and pianists-parents, Pan Yiming and Ying Shizhen. He continued his studies at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Syracuse University in New York, and earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey. 

Mr. Pan has won many international piano competitions and awards, beginning with first prize in the 1986 China National Piano Competition in Beijing, and the "Dr. Luis Sigall" International Piano Competition in Chile in 1987, the International Festival Piano Competition in Korea in 1990, the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition in New York in 1992, and the Artists International Competition in New York in 1993. A student of Theodore Lettvin, Mr. Pan has performed solo recitals worldwide from Carnegie Weill Hall to the Beijing National Center for Performing Arts. He has performed in Moscow, Santiago, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, London, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Taipei, Budapest, Salzburg, Sicily, New York, Seoul, Pyongyang, Biel, Bern, Brussels, Vina Del Mar, Washington DC, Lisbon, Toronto, Boston, San Jose, San Francisco, and many other cities in the world. He “…excites his audience with extraordinary power and masterful technique.” (The Star-Ledger)

A noted chamber musician, Mr. Pan is the pianist of the Newstead Trio, Trio Clavino, and Gabriel Chamber Ensemble. Their work has been broadcast live on radio and television, and they have released several highly acclaimed recordings. Trio Clavino toured seven cities in China with Fulbright Grants managed by US Embassy in Beijing in 2014, and again in 2016. Mr. Pan has been served as a judge in many competitions include "Frinna Awerbuch" International Piano Competition in New York, United States Music Open Competition in Oakland, CA, United States International Music competition in Stanford, CA, Pancho Vladigerov International Piano Competition in Shumen, Bulgaria, and Maria Clara Cullell International Piano Competition in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Dr. Pan is the Director of Keyboard Studies of The Tell School of Music at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and is a visiting professor at many universities and conservatories in China, includes Central Conservatory of Music, China Conservatory of Music, Guangzhou Xinghai Conservatory of Music, Sichuan Conservatory of Music, China Northwest University for Nationalities, Fuzhou University, Yantai University, Shandong University, Qinghai Normal University, Ningbo University, Qinghai University, and Wenzhou University. He also taught master classes at Manhattan School of Music, Boston University, Frost School of Music at University of Miami, University of West Florida, Benjamin T Rome School of Music at The Catholic University of America, Dartmouth College, Mozarteum University (Austria), Bellini Music Institute (Italy), Tbilisi State Conservatoire (Georgia), and others. He taught and served as the Chairman of the Piano Department at Pennsylvania Academy of Music between 1996 and 2009. 

Dr. Pan is one of the founding members and the Co-Artistic Director of the Lancaster International Piano Festival in Pennsylvania, USA.  

He performed the entire 32 piano sonatas, 10 piano/violin sonatas, 8 piano/cello works, and 13 piano trios of Beethoven to celebrate his 250th anniversary of birth a couple of years ago.

Corey HammCorey Hamm

University of British Columbia

Pianist Corey Hamm has established a unique musical profile performing widely in North America and in Asia as both soloist and chamber musician. His CD of Frederic Rzewski’s hour-long solo piano epic The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Redshift Records TK431)  won Spotify's Best Classical Recording 2014, and Best Classical Recording at the 2014 Western Canadian Music Awards. He has performed the work over 80 times all over the world. Corey Hamm’s extensive work in the 1990s with  the great French composer Henri Dutilleux will  come to fruition in his plan to record Dutilleux’s complete works for solo piano and chamber with piano in the near future. Among his other recording plans are CDs of solo works written for Corey by Michael Finnissy, Frederic Rzewski, John Psathas, Alice Pingyee Ho, Adam Zolty, Claude Lapalme, Keith Hamel, Jocelyn Morlock, Jordan Nobles, Dorothy Chang, Ronn Yedidia, and , and a CD with Nu:BC. 

Corey Hamm has commissioned, premiered and recorded over four hundred works by composers  from all over the world.  These commissions have been for solo piano, chamber music, and concerti. 

His most extensive collection of commissioned works includes over 80 pieces  for  PEP (Piano and Erhu Project) with whom he has toured China.  To date the composers for the project come from China, Canada, UK,  and the United States, and include Michael Finnissy, GAO Ping, Brian Cherney, among many others. The result is a new and flourishing catalogue of works for piano and erhu composed in the musical languages of the 21st century.  This combination of instruments bringing together two of the world’s great musical traditions,  now has a unique collection of works to draw from for audiences of the 21st century. PEP has released some of these works on their PEP CDs, Vols. 1, 2, and 3 (Redshift TK437, TK440, TK474). Volume 2 was nominated for Best Classical Recording at the 2015 Western Canadian Music Awards, and PEP won Ensemble of the Year at the 2021 WCMA.

Corey has also commissioned  over 50 works for The Nu:BC  Collective and for  Hammerhead Consort  (two piano and two percussion).  As pianist for The Nu:BC Collective  he has released the critically acclaimed CD Beyond Shadows (Redshift TK432), and as a founding member of Hammerhead Consort, he received the 1993 Sir Ernest Macmillan Memorial Foundation Chamber Music Award, and was winner of the 1992 National Chamber Music Competition. 

In recent years, Corey Hamm has studied, recorded and toured one of the great piano works of the last decades, Frederic Rzewski's monumental hour-long solo piano epic, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Redshift TK431). This work, made up of a theme and 36 variations, has been recorded by a small number of pianists including Marc-André Hamelin, Ursula Oppens,  and Stephen Drury. Frederic Rzewski received Corey Hamm’s interpretation as one of the finest to date. “Excellent! Bravo! This may be the best recording.” 

Corey Hamm premiered Dorothy Chang’s PEP Double Concerto for erhu and piano soloists, Gateways, with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO), and was soloist in the World Premiere of Jordan Nobles’ Piano Concerto with Bramwell Tovey and the VSO. He gave the World Premiere of Howard Bashaw's Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion with conductor Grzegorz Nowak and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and  has recent and upcoming performances of Ligeti Piano Concerto, Barber Piano Concerto, Prokofiev Piano Concerto 2, Prokofiev Piano Concerto 3, Dorothy Chang double concerto Gateways, Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto 2, Bartok Piano Concerto 2, Lutoslawski Piano Concerto, Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, Faure Fantasie Op. 111, and Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue.

Dr. Hamm is Professor of Piano at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he was awarded the prestigious Killam Teaching Award, and the Dorothy Somerset Award for Artistic Excellence. He is on the Piano Faculty of the Chetham’s International Piano Festival, Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP) at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and the New England Conservatory (NEC) in Boston, MusicFest Perugia (MFP) in Italy. His beloved teachers include Lydia Artymiw, Marek Jablonski, Stéphane Lemelin, Ernesto Lejano, and Thelma Johannes O'Neill. 

Dr. Hamm has given masterclasses, lectures, and recitals at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore, NYU, New England Conservatory, Rotterdam Conservatory of Music, Carpi Music Festival, Beijing Capitol Normal University, Central Conservatory of China, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Sichuan Conservatory of Music, Wuhan University, Soochow Unversity, Washington University, Roosevelt University, McGill University, University of Toronto, Glenn Gould School, among many others. 

Dr. Hamm’s students have won prizes at numerous international and national competitions including: 2024 Leeds International Piano Competition (First Prize), 2024 Concours de Montréal International Musique (First Prize, Prize for Best Performance of Required Work), 2023 Orleans Concours Internationale Brins Herb (OCI) (Second Prize, Prize for Best Performance of Required Work), 2022 Santander Paloma O’Shea International Piano Competition (First Prize, Chamber Music prize, Audience Prize), 2022 Maria Canals International Piano Competition (First Prize, and Audience Prize), 2022 Hilton Head International Piano Competition (First Prize), 2018 Hilton Head International Junior Piano Competition (Second Prize, and prize for Best Classical Sonata Performance), Seattle International Piano Festival (Professional Prize, College Prize), 2022 and 2021 Architecture of Music International Piano Competition (Grand Prize, Senior Prize, Classical Prize, Bach Prize, Chopin Prize), 2019 Stepping Stones Competition (First Prize), 2022 Shean Piano Competition (2024 Second Prize, 2022 First Prize, 2022 Second Prize, 2022/2018 Prize for Best Performance of the Required Work),  Canadian Music Competition (Second Prizes 2023, Third Prize 2023, First Prize 2021), Robert and Ellen Silverman Piano Concerto Competition (First Prize 2024, 2022, 2018), UBC multi-division Concerto Competition, 2015 National Music  Competition (Grand Prize, and First Prize),  2015 RMTA National Competition (First Prize, Second Prize, Third Prize, and Prize for Best Performance of a Canadian Work), E-Gré Contemporay Music Competition . His students have been accepted for graduate and undergraduate studies at such prestigious  institutions as Juilliard, Indiana University, NYU, Mannes, Manhattan School of Music, Eastman, Royal Academy of Music, Mozarteum, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Conservatory, Boston University, Berklee College, New England Conservatory, Glenn Gould School, McGill University, Hong Kong Baptist University, University of Toronto, University of Texas at Austin, among others.

Kyu Yeon KimKyu Yeon Kim

Seoul National University

Kyu Yeon Kim is among the prize winners of  Dublin International Piano Competition, Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition, Cleveland International Piano Competition, Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition, Geneva International Music Competition and Missouri Southern International Piano Competition.

Kyu Yeon has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Severance Hall, BOZAR, Jordan Hall, Seoul Arts Center, the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, New World Center in Miami, Penderecki European Centre for Music, TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht and Opera de Rennes.

She has appeared as a soloist with a number of orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, New World Symphony, National Orchestra of Belgium, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonietta Cracovia, Utah Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, Hungarian Chamber Orchestra, KBS Symphony Orchestra and the RTE National Symphony Orchestra. As an avid chamber musician, she was invited to perform at the Casals Festival in France, Emanacje Festival in Poland, Great Mountains Winter Festival, Seoul Spring Festival, Miami Chamber Music Festival and Seoul International Music Festival.

Born in Seoul, Kyu Yeon Kim studied at the Korean National University of Arts with Choong-Mo Kang and later at the Universität der Künste in Berlin with Klaus Hellwig. Kim is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music (Diploma), New England Conservatory (MM),  the Cleveland Institute of Music (Artist Diploma) and Manhattan School of Music (DMA) where she worked with Gary Graffman, Russell Sherman, Sergei Babayan and Solomon Mikowsky.

Her debut album Rameau & Schubert was released by DUX label in 2017 and her second album Voyage was released by Sony Classical in 2021.

She currently serves as an associate professor of piano at Seoul National University.

 

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