Keynotes and Guest Artists

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PEDx

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Opening Concert: Piano Stories on Stage LIVE

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Keynote and Guest Artist Biographies

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Noted for her musical command, cosmopolitan artistry, and visionary independence, Sara Davis Buechner is one of the most original concert pianists of our time. Lauded for her “intelligence, integrity and all-encompassing technical prowess” (New York Times), “thoughtful artistry in the full service of music” (Washington Post), and “astounding virtuosity” (Philippine Star), Japan’s InTune magazine sums up: “Buechner has no superior.”

In her twenties Ms. Buechner earned a bouquet of top prizes at the world’s premiere international piano competitions — Queen Elisabeth (Brussels), Leeds, Mozart (Salzburg), Beethoven (Vienna), and Sydney. She was a Bronze Medalist of the 1986 Tschaikowsky Competition in Moscow and the Gold Medalist of the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition.

Ms. Buechner has performed in every state and province of North America — as recitalist, chamber musician and soloist with top orchestras like the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra; and in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and the Hollywood Bowl. She has toured throughout Latin and South America and Europe; and she enjoys a special following in Asia, where she has been a featured soloist with the Sydney Symphony, New Zealand Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic and Shanghai Philharmonic, among many others.

She has commissioned and premiered important contemporary scores by composers such as Michael Brown, John Corigliano, Ray Green, Dick Hyman, Vitězslavá Kaprálová, Jared Miller, Joaquín Nin-Culmell, and Yukiko Nishimura. Ms. Buechner’s performance versatility extends to unique collaborations with film and dance (including tours with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and Japanese kabuki-mime-mask dancer Yayoi Hirano).

Ms. Buechner has released numerous acclaimed recordings of rare piano music by composers such as Rudolf Friml (“a revelation” — The New York Times), Dana Suesse, Joseph Lamb, Joaquín Turina, Miklós Rózsa, and Ferruccio Busoni (including the world première recording of the Bach-Busoni “Goldberg” Variations). Stereophile magazine selected her Gershwin CD as “Recording of the Month,” and her interpretation of Hollywood Piano Concertos won Germany’s coveted Deutsches Schauplatten Preis. Most recently her recorded traversal of the score to Carl Dreiser’s silent movie classic Master of the House (1925) may be heard on Criterion Collection DVD.

Sara Davis Buechner joined the faculty of Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance in 2016, after previously teaching at the Manhattan School of Music, New York University and the University of British Columbia. She has presented masterclasses and workshops at major pedagogic venues worldwide, adjudicated important international piano competitions, and is also a contributing editor for Dover Publications International. In 2017 Ms. Buechner marked her 30th year as a dedicated Yamaha Artist.

As a proud transgender woman, Ms. Buechner also appears as a speaker and performer at important LGBTQ events, and has contributed interviews and articles about her own experience to numerous media outlets worldwide.

Sara is a dual American-Canadian citizen who makes her home in Philadelphia.

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Russian-American pianist Olga Kern is now recognized as one of her generation’s great pianists. She jumpstarted her U.S. career with her historic Gold Medal win at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas as the first woman to do so in more than thirty years.

First prize winner of the Rachmaninoff International Piano Competition at seventeen, Ms. Kern is a laureate of many international competitions. In 2016 she served as Jury Chairman of both the Seventh Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition and the first Olga Kern International Piano Competition, where she also holds the title of Artistic Director. Ms. Kern frequently gives masterclasses and since September 2017 has served on the piano faculty of the prestigious Manhattan School of Music. Additionally, Ms. Kern has been chosen as the Virginia Arts Festival’s new Connie & Marc Jacobson Director of Chamber Music, beginning with the 2019 season.

For the 2019-20 season, Kern performed with the Allentown Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, Toledo Symphony Orchestra, New Mexico Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, New West Symphony, and the Sao Paulo Symphony, as well as appearing on United States Tour with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. She is also the guest soloist at the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center for Leonard Slatkin’s 75th Birthday Celebration. She will appear in recitals in Orford, Sunriver, Fort Worth (Cliburn), Carmel, San Francisco, Sicily, Calvia, and Helsingborg. This October and November, Olga Kern will be hosting her Second Olga Kern International Piano Competition. This season, she will also be a part of the jury at the following piano competitions: Sydney International Piano Competition, Gurwitz International Piano Competition, Gershwin Piano Competition, Schumann Prize Competition, and the Scriabin International Competition.

In recent seasons, Kern performed with the Moscow Philharmonic, Santa Fe Symphony, and the St. Louis Symphony, as well as opened the Pacific Symphony’s 2018-19 season. Kern was also a featured soloist for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra during the 2018-19 Tour. She also served as Artist in Residence for the San Antonio Symphony’s 2017-18 season and had her debut with the National Youth Orchestra on their China tour. Ms. Kern opened the Baltimore Symphony’s 2015-2016 centennial season with Marin Alsop. Other season highlights included returns to the Royal Philharmonic with Pinchas Zukerman, Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice with Giancarlo Guerrero.

Ms. Kern’s discography includes her Grammy Nominated recording of Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations and other transcriptions (2004), Brahms Variations (2007) and Chopin Piano Sonatas No. 2 and 3 (2010). She was featured in the award-winning documentary about the 2001 Cliburn Competition, Playing on the Edge.

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Joyce McCall was appointed to the faculty at Arizona State University in 2021 where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre. Previous appointments include the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she served as an assistant professor of music education, and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music where she served as a postdoctoral resident scholar and visiting assistant professor in music education.  

McCall’s research—positioned within the context of frameworks like critical race theory and double consciousness theory—centers on how race and culture impact educational equity in music learning and teaching. Additionally, she examines how certain pedagogies such as culturally relevant teaching influences learning outcomes among minoritized racial populations in the music classroom. She has presented sessions and research at the American Educational Research Association, the College Music Society, the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, the National Association for Music Education, and the Society for Music Teacher Education, and published manuscripts in Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, Journal of Music Teacher Education, the Desert Skies Symposium on Research in Music Education. In her most recent publication titled “Straight, No Chaser: An Unsung Blues” in the Handbook of Critical Race Theory (2nd edition), McCall employs critical race theory to illuminate how systemic racism in U.S. college music programs, particularly their music education programs, have contributed to what she refers to as an unsung blues, a collection of blues stories that have yet to be performed by those to whom they belong. These blues stories, or rather choruses of an unsung blues, reflect how Black voices as their music, culture, and epistemological perspectives have been excluded, fabricated, and filtered through frameworks of Whiteness and White, Eurocentric dominance. To confront countless choruses of an unsung blues and provide a better path forward to realizing substantive change among U.S. music schools and their music education programs, McCall suggests that they look to cultural artifacts such as Thelonious Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser” and his compositional and performance styles.  

McCall has proudly served as a clarinetist and saxophonist in the United States Army Bands from 1999 to 2013. During her service, she was awarded the Army Achievement Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. Previous assignments include the 151st Army Band in Montgomery, Alabama; the 41st Army Band in Jackson, Mississippi; the 36th Infantry Division Band in Austin, Texas; and the 108th Army Band in Phoenix, Arizona. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated and Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity for Women.

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There was one overwhelming reason Karen Zorn accepted the position of President of the Longy School of Music in 2007. The school’s newly adopted mission – “to prepare students to make a difference in the world” – was unlike that of any other conservatory in the world. The mission suggested a fundamentally different approach to music education. And it offered a radically different view of the kind of work that Longy students might seek, create, and engage in after graduation. 

In pursuit of this mission, Zorn has led Longy through a dramatic transformation. A fearless educational entrepreneur, Zorn has established partnerships, programs, and initiatives that have permanently altered the school’s trajectory and positioned it as a leader in equitable music education. 

She executed the pivotal merger with Bard College in 2012 and has since established numerous strategic partnerships with organizations such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, FundaMusical of Venezuela (El Sistema), the Music for Healing and Transition Program, and countless Sistema-inspired programs across the country. Zorn cofounded Take a Stand, a collaboration between Longy, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Bard College, and launched the Master of Arts in Teaching degree program in Los Angeles—the first-ever degree program to be offered in conjunction with a major orchestra. 

In 2013, she established the Longy Sistema Side-by-Side program on the school’s Cambridge campus, bringing high quality music education to hundreds of students from under-resourced communities throughout the northeast, and offering hands-on teaching and mentorship opportunities for conservatory musicians. Recognizing the immense impact of this program, Zorn expanded musical education opportunities at the school, opening a Master of Music in Music Education degree program in 2020. 

Soon after assuming leadership of Longy, Zorn realized that preparing students to make a different in the world would require a radically different kind of music education. 

During Zorn’s tenure at Longy, the school entirely redesigned its curriculum to ignite students’ agency, eschewing traditional requirements to offer practical tools for a variety of careers in music. 

Longy has pioneered a new coaching program, empowering each student to create their own individualized path in school and beyond. In 2017, Longy launched the Music as a Healing Art program, which offers students the chance to bring their talent to a diverse array of hospitals, elder care facilities, and transitional housing centers. In 2019, under Zorn’s leadership, Longy spearheaded a multi-year Diversity in Repertoire initiative which requires at least 25% of all repertoire studied and performed at Longy to be written by composers of historically underrepresented identities in classical music. Longy implemented an overhaul of the undergraduate theory curriculum to decenter the Western white male frame. In 2021, Longy piloted the school’s first fully online Master of Music in Music Education degree, expanding access to culturally responsive music education globally. 

To provide meaningful professional experience for Longy’s students, Zorn has helped Longy forge numerous partnerships with artistic organizations including A Far Cry, Boston Camerata, Boston Early Music Festival, Boston Opera Collaborative, Castle of Our Skins, Celebrity Series Boston, the Imagine Orchestra, and the New Gallery Concert Series, among many others. She has spearheaded numerous opportunities for Longy students to teach and perform in public schools, community centers, prisons, and other external venues where the traditions of music education can contribute to public life. 

Zorn is an active teacher, guest speaker for keynote addresses, and frequent consultant for arts organizations and other non-profits on matters of creative artistry, curricular innovation, and leadership. She appears annually at the Verbier Festival, where she teaches courses on artistic innovation and audience engagement. She has taught of the Banff Artist Residency Program, Carnegie Hall, and has been a member of the faculties of Berklee, MacPhail Center for the Arts, and the University of Missouri, Kansas City. 

Zorn has held positions on the Boards of the Community Music Center of Boston, The Creativity Foundation, and the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy. In 2014, she was recognized Musical America’s Profiles in Courage. 

Prior to her tenure at Longy, Zorn served as Associate Provost at Berklee College of Music, where she forged a global network of partnerships with organizations including the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory, and the Sorbonne Université. She held the roles of Acting Director and Director of Instruction at MacPhail Center for the Arts in Minneapolis. 

A Wisconsin native and Boston resident, Zorn is herself a classically trained musician, having been educated as a pianist at Goshen College in Indiana and later receiving a master’s degree in piano performance at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

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PEDx Biographies

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Navajo pianist and composer Connor Chee is known for combining his classical piano training with his Native American heritage. Chee made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 12 after winning a gold medal in the World Piano Competition. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, Chee’s solo piano music is inspired by traditional Navajo chants and songs.

Chee has released 4 studio albums of original pieces and piano transcriptions of Navajo music. The Navajo Piano (2014) won Best Instrumental Recording at the 16th Annual Native American Music Awards, and his piece “Beginnings” won Best New Age Song. Chee’s 2020 release, Scenes from Dinétah, features piano pieces written about elements of Navajo life and culture. It was accompanied by the release of several music videos filmed on the reservation, directed by Navajo filmmaker Michael Etcitty Jr.

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Leah Claiborne, D.M.A. promotes diversity in the arts by championing piano music by Black composers in her performances, research, and teaching. 

She has established the first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion column for American Music Teacher where she regularly publishes articles providing resources and support to music educators across the country. Recent recognitions include the Stecher and Horowitz Power of Innovation Award, Yamaha’s 40under40 most influential music educators in America, and Emerging Artist Alumni Award presented by University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance.

Dr. Claiborne serves as Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Frances Clark Center and serves as the co-chair of the DEI track for the National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy. She has performed across the United States, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Japan. Dr. Claiborne is Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at the University of the District of Columbia and teaches History of African American Music.

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Vanessa Cornett is Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy at the University of St. Thomas (Minneapolis–St. Paul), author of the book The Mindful Musician: Mental Skills for Peak Performance, and a 2022-2023 Fulbright scholar. Her research focuses on contemplative practices, peak performance psychology, and the mental well-being of musicians.

Dr. Cornett works with musicians and other creative artists who struggle with performance anxiety or who want to develop their mental skills for peak performance experiences. She is a certified meditation instructor with post-graduate training in sport psychology. Dr.Cornett has presented workshops in 23 states and 17 countries. She received her D.M.A in Piano Performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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Hailed as a “forward thinking classical pianist” (Midwest Record) for her debut album Rückblick: New Piano Music Inspired by Brahms (Furious Artisans, 2020), pianist Ann Duhamel has performed in 17 countries on four continents. In addition, Ann has been an active member of the Minnesota Music Teachers Association (MMTA) for 25 years. Some of her most important contributions on the MMTA Board of Directors include spearheading the MMTA Foundation State Fellow Award and ushering forth a Land Acknowledgement to honor the Indigenous people and cultures from Minnesota.

Dr. Duhamel currently serves as Associate Professor/Head of Keyboard Studies at the University of Minnesota Morris. She earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance and pedagogy at the University of Iowa, and previously served as Assistant Artistic Director to Paul Wirth at the Wirth Center/Central Minnesota Music School in St Cloud, MN. More at annduhamel.com.

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Polish-born pianist Igor Lipinski made his U.S. debut with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra on NPR’s Performance Today. A graduate of Eastman School of Music and Northwestern University, Lipinski maintains an active concert career in the U.S. and has released multiple albums under his own record label Vanishing Records.

As an Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Oklahoma, Lipinski explores a variety of unconventional and multidisciplinary recital practices to reimagine the traditional format of a piano recital. Lipinski’s “Piano Illusions,” a program of music and magic, has been featured in concert venues across the world from Hong Kong to New York City and by various orchestras including Rochester Philharmonic and Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra. Teller, of Las Vegas duo Penn & Teller, calls Igor an original: “He thrills you on the piano. He mystifies you with magical illusions. And he keeps you laughing with his impudent, charismatic charm.”

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Described as a pianist with “power and finesse”, “beautiful and fiery” (KMFA Austin) and having a “sense of color, balance and texture” (Austin Chamber Music Center) Artina McCain, has built a three-fold career as a performer, educator and speaker. Dedicated to promoting the works of Black and other underrepresented composers, McCain curates Underrepresented Composers Concerts for multiple arts organizations. She is an American Prize winner for her solo piano recordings of these works and won a Gold Global Music Award for her recent album project Heritage. In 2021, Hal Leonard published her transcriptions of Twenty-Four Traditional African American Folk Songs.

McCain holds a doctoral degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Currently, she is Associate Professor of Piano and Coordinator of the Keyboard Area at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis and Co-Founder/Director of the Memphis International Piano Festival and Competition.

Opening Concert Artist Biographies

Caramia continues his devotion to teaching at the Eastman School of Music (1990-present), where he directs the Piano Pedagogy Studies, coordinates the Class Piano Program, and teaches applied piano and beginning jazz piano.  He loves working with teaching assistants from around the globe as well as championing his students (Mr. C. and His All-Stars!) in studio concerts, also with themes:  Fringe Fingers, Celebrating Women in Music, 2 Pianos—140 Fingers, A Child is Born and Duo Piano Compositions by Women.

A strong believer in theme recitals, Caramia has presented numerous multi-media programs, with tributes to composers George Gershwin, Billy Mayerl, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, and Dana Suesse. Awards include the Frances Clark Center National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy Lifetime Achievement Award (2021), and the Inaugural Outstanding Service Recognition Award (2019), and the SUNY Fredonia Outstanding Achievement Award (2010).

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Angelin Chang is America’s first woman classical pianist to win the GRAMMY® Award (Best Instrumental Soloist with orchestra). Recognized by Johns Hopkins University as a female trailblazer in Women of Hopkins and selected into Nashville’s prestigious Leadership Music, Dr. Chang is Keyboard Area Coordinator and Professor of Music and Law at Cleveland State University. Her piano teachers include Yoheved Kaplinsky, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Menahem Pressler, György Sebök, and Dorothy Taubman. Through performance-related injury prevention and alleviation techniques, she develops virtuosity in pianists while liberating them from fatigue, pain, and injuries so they enjoy lasting technical freedom, artistic expression, and career longevity.

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Pianist Andrew Cooperstock has performed widely on six continents. His recording, Leonard Bernstein: Complete Solo Works for Piano (Bridge, Deutsche Grammophon) was lauded by Gramophone as “winning” and “brilliant.” With violinist William Terwilliger, he has recorded a critically acclaimed series of discs of American music by Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Lowell Liebermann, Stephen Sondheim, and others. 

Dr. Cooperstock is Professor of Piano at the University of Colorado Boulder and President of Colorado State Music Teachers Association. In 2020 he received the Boulder Faculty Assembly Excellence Award in Teaching and Pedagogy. Dr. Cooperstock holds degrees from the Juilliard School and the Cincinnati and Peabody Conservatories, where he studied with Abbey Simon, David Bar-Illan, Walter Hautzig, and Samuel Sanders.

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Kairy Koshoeva holds a Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, in addition to Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from  the Gnessin Academy of Music in Moscow and an Artist’s Diploma from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Dr. Koshoeva has garnered awards from around the globe including top prizes at the International Piano  Competition in Vicenza, Italy, the N. Rubinstein Competition in Paris, the Gold Medal at the 2004 Rachmaninoff Awards in Moscow, and first prize at the Chautauqua Music Festival concerto competition in New York. 

Dr. Koshoeva has performed internationally in Israel, France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Switzerland, as well as in the United States. Recent awards include being named a Teacher of Distinction in Carnegie Hall by The Royal Academy of Music in 2019 and winning First Prize at the 2020 “Musica Classica”  International Competition in Moscow, Russia.

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Susanna Garcia and William Chapman Nyaho met during doctoral studies at the University of Texas at Austin during the 1980s. Their musical collaboration began when they both began teaching at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in the early 1990s. Since then, they have gained recognition throughout the United States, Europe, and Africa with programs that blend standard repertoire with newer works highlighting the diversity of voices and musical styles that can be found in classical music. Their ensemble has been described as “one head, one heart, but four hands.” Their new recording, Five by Four, was released in April on MSR Classics.

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Described by the New York Times as a “talented and entrepreneurial pianist” and an “able and persuasive advocate” of new music, Nicholas Phillips’ playing has been praised for its “bejeweled accuracy” (Fanfare) and as “razor-sharp yet wonderfully spirited” (American Record Guide).  A Professor of Piano at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, he maintains an active schedule as a soloist and collaborative artist, having performed across the United States as well as in Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa. As a recording artist and champion of living composers, he has released 5 critically acclaimed CDs. His most recent, Shift, features world premiere recordings of music by living women composers. Phillips is a Yamaha Artist.

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Pianist-composer JEREMY SISKIND is “a genuine visionary” (Indianapolis Star) who “seems to defy all boundaries” (JazzInk) with music “rich in texture and nuance” (Downbeat). A top finisher in several national and international jazz piano competitions, Siskind is a two-time laureate of the American Pianists Association and the winner of the Nottingham International Jazz Piano Competition. Since making his professional debut juxtaposing Debussy’s Etudes with jazz standards at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Siskind has established himself as one of the nation’s most innovative and virtuosic modern pianists. Siskind is the author of best-selling jazz piano books Playing Solo Jazz Piano and Jazz Piano Fundamentals.

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