Piano Institute Faculty
David Korevaar
David Korevaar's mastery of the piano is joined with a large and varied repertoire, and enhanced by his work with living composers and his own experience writing music. He successfully balances an active performing career as a soloist and chamber musician with teaching at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is Assistant Professor of Piano. Mr. Korevaar has been heard at major venues in New York including Weill Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Town Hall, and Merkin Concert Hall. He has performed across the United States from Boston, New York and Washington, DC to Chicago, Cincinnati, Houston, Dallas and San Diego, and he plays frequently in his home state of Colorado with orchestras, in chamber ensembles and in solo recitals. International performances have included appearances in Australia, Japan, Korea, Abu Dhabi and Europe. Korevaar has performed as soloist with orchestras throughout the United States. Currently a member of the Boulder Public Library's ensemble-in-residence, the Boulder Piano Quartet (with violinist Claude Sim, violist Martin Sher and cellist Thomas Heinrich) and University of Texas at Dallas's resident Clavier Trio (with violinist Arkady Fomin and cellist Jesus Castro-Balbi), Korevaar has performed as guest artist with the Takács, Manhattan and Colorado Quartets, among other groups. He was a founding member of the Young Concert Artists Award-winning piano and wind ensemble Hexagon, with which he toured for many years. His CD recordings include Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin, Gaspard de la nuit, and Miroirs (MSR Classics), Brahms Variations for Piano (Ivory Classics), the two books of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (Musicians Showcase), piano music of Lowell Liebermann, Volume 1 and Volume 2 (Koch Classics), and romantic virtuoso compositions of Ernst von Dohnányi (Ivory Classics), and transcriptions (his own) of orchestral music by Franz Liszt , including the rarely heard 2nd Mephisto Waltz (Helicon). He was honored along with co-author and webmaster Tim Smith of Northern Arizona University for a web-based exploration of the Fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier . The site received top honors both in music and overall, including the Editor's Choice Award from MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching). Other honors include top prizes from the University of Maryland William Kapell International Piano Competition (1988) and the Peabody-Mason Music Foundation (1985), as well as a special prize for his performance of French music from the Robert Casadesus Competition (1989). In May 2000, he received the Richard French award from the Juilliard School, honoring his doctoral document on Ravel's Miroirs . He began his piano studies at age six in San Diego with Sherman Storr, and at age 13 he became a student of the great American virtuoso Earl Wild. By age 20 he had earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Juilliard School, where he continued his studies with Earl Wild and studied composition with David Diamond. He completed his Doctor of Musical Arts from the Juilliard School with Abbey Simon. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Colorado in 2000, Korevaar taught for many years at the Westport School of Music in Connecticut, where he was Artist-Teacher. Mr. Korevaar is a Kawai artist.
Website: http://www.davidkorevaar.com/
James Giles
James Giles has earned a reputation as one of the most versatile pianists of his generation, acclaimed for the dynamic brilliance and communicative power of his playing. Last season's schedule included a tour of China and a recital at Warsaw's Chopin Academy of Music in addition to recitals in Seattle, Chicago, Tucson, Birmingham, and Champaign-Urbana. This season he returns to China; appears as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Bangor, Boise, and Evanston; and performs with the Chicago Chamber Musicians, the Rembrandt Chamber Players, members of the Chicago Symphony, and with his wife Sevgi as a piano duet at the American Liszt Society Conference. Recordings of Schubert and new American music are slated for release in 2006. In an eclectic repertoire encompassing the solo and chamber music literatures, Giles is equally at home in the standard repertoire as in the music of our time. He has commissioned and premiered works by William Bolcom, C. Curtis-Smith, Stephen Hough , Lowell Liebermann , Ned Rorem, Augusta Read Thomas , Earl Wild , and James Wintle. His Paris recital in 2004 was hailed as "a true revelation, due equally to the pianist's artistry as to his choice of program." (Read the review.) The critic for Helsinki's main newspaper wrote that "Giles is a technically polished, elegant pianist." (Read the review.) And a London critic called his recent Wigmore Hall recital "one of the most sheerly inspired piano recitals I can remember hearing for some time" and added that "with a riveting intelligence given to everything he played, it was the kind of recital you never really forget." (Read the review.) He has performed with New York's Jupiter Symphony; the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra in Queen Elizabeth Hall; the Kharkiv Philharmonic in Ukraine; and with the Opera Orchestra of New York in Alice Tully Hall. After his Tully Hall solo recital debut, critic Harris Goldsmith wrote: "Giles has a truly distinctive interpretive persona. This was beautiful pianism - direct and unmannered." Other tours have included concerts in Chicago's Dame Myra Hess Series, Salt Lake City's Assembly Hall Concert Series, and in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Musikhalle in Hamburg, and the Purcell Room at London's South Bank Centre. He has given live recitals over the public radio stations of New York, Boston, Chicago, and Indianapolis. His compact disc of works by Schumann and Prokofiev is available on England's Master Musicians label. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with members of the National Symphony and with members of the Chicago, Ying, Chester, St. Lawrence, Essex, and Miami Quartets, as well as renowned singers Aprile Millo and Anthony Dean Griffey. A native of North Carolina, Dr. Giles studied with Byron Janis at the Manhattan School of Music, Jerome Lowenthal at the Juilliard School, Nelita True at the Eastman School of Music, and Robert Shannon at Oberlin College. The pianist received early career assistance from the Clarisse B. Kampel Foundation and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Florence with the legendary pianist Lazar Berman. He was the recipient of a fellowship grant and the Christel Award from the American Pianists Association and now serves on the APA's National Advisory Board. He won first prizes at the New Orleans International Piano Competition, the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, and the Music Teachers National Association Competition. As a student he was awarded the prestigious William Petschek Scholarship at the Juilliard School and the Rudolf Serkin Award for outstanding graduate at the Oberlin College Conservatory. He has written for Piano and Keyboard magazine and has presented lecture-recitals at the national conventions of the Music Teachers National Association, the College Music Society, and Pi Kappa Lambda. He has served on the juries of several international piano competitions. Dr. Giles is on the piano faculty at Northwestern University . He has recently been a guest professor at the Sibelius Academy in Finland and at Indiana University, where he taught the students of Menahem Pressler. He has formerly served on the faculties of the University of North Texas and the Interlochen Arts Academy. He is the founder of the Las Vegas Piano Institute, an educational summer program for young pianists, and is the chair of the piano department at the Eastern Music Festival during the summers.
Website: http://www.jamesgiles.net/
Fernando Laires
Fernando Laires joined the Eastman faculty in 1998 as professor of piano, and also holds the position of Permanent Guest Professor of Piano at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music in the People's Republic of China. He is co-founder and president emeritus of the American Liszt Society. Laires received an Artist Diploma from the National Conservatory of Music, Lisbon, Portugal. Laires launched his professional career at age 19 by performing the cycle of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. To commemorate the event, he was awarded a grand piano by the faculty of the National Conservatory of Music, and the Beethoven Medal, in memory of Artur Schnabel, by the Harriet Cohen International Music Awards, London, England. The following year, he performed in cycle the 10 Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin. For winning first prize at a national piano competition in Portugal, he was awarded a fellowship to study with Ernest Hutcheson at Juilliard and Isidor Philipp in New York, and to pursue a study tour of Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, and England. At age 24 he was appointed professor of piano at the National Conservatory of Music. Four years later, Laires was invited by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to observe music teaching in the US for six months at 20 universities, colleges, and conservatories from coast to coast. Laires has recorded over 86 works and has performed on five continents and in major cities-London, Paris, Lisbon, Vienna, Warsaw, Budapest, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Jakarta, Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, and throughout the United States-and has been a juror of competitions such as the Tchaikovsky in Moscow, the Van Cliburn in the US, and the Franz Liszt in Budapest. Laires was formerly an artist-teacher at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He was awarded the Liszt Centennial Commemorative Medal by the government of Hungary and was decorated by the government of Portugal.
Website: http://www.esm.rochester.edu/faculty/?id=98
Lisa Leonard
A native of Washington, D.C., pianist Lisa Leonard enjoys a diverse career as soloist and chamber musician bringing her to more than 100 concert venues per year. In 1990 at the age of 17, Ms. Leonard made her debut with the National Symphony Orchestra in six concerts at the Kennedy Center. She has appeared as soloist throughout Europe, Japan, Russia and North America with orchestras including the Charlotte Symphony (FL), International Music Festival Orchestra and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela. An active chamber musician, she has performed with members of the Berlin, Vienna, New York and Cincinnati Symphonies in performances featured on National Public Radio's "Performance Today" and "Command Performance" programs. Her love of new music has resulted in several premieres of both solo and chamber music including the recent recording of James Aikmans' Sonata No. 3 with violinist Alexander Kerr, concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Ms. Leonard has served on the faculties of the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Meadowmount School of Music and has performed at the Pacific Music Festival, Gilmore International Piano Festival, Caramoor and the East/West International Festival. She currently serves on the faculty of the Conservatory of Music at Lynn University and is a member of the Palm Beach Chamber Players. She received her M.M. and B.M. from the Manhattan School of Music where she was the premiere recipient of both the Rubinstein and Balsam awards, two of the highest awards given. Her former teachers include Eric Larsen, Marc Silverman, Suzanne W. Guy, Isidore Cohen, Thomas Schumacher, Cynthia Phelps, David Geber and the Meadowmount Trio.
Website: http://www.oregonmozartplayers.org/season/LLeonard.asp
Jerome Lowenthal
Mr. Lowenthal has appeared with virtually every major orchestra in the U.S. His voluminous repertoire includes nearly sixty performed concerti, including works written expressly for him. Mr. Lowenthal's recordings include a CD of pieces by Liszt with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra; solo works by great composers who played the Steinway piano, performed on ten different Steinway pianos; and the complete works of Tchaikovsky for piano and orchestra with the London Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Lowenthal is former chair of the piano department at The Julliard School where he has taught since 1991. In 1997, he joined the jury of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition.
Ursula Oppens
Ursula Oppens has won renown both as a persuasive interpreter of classical repertoire and as a tireless champion of contemporary music. Her performances are marked by a compelling grasp of the composer's musical intentions as well as a powerful command of the keyboard's resources.
In the 2004/05 season, she continues to appear in recital, chamber music, and as orchestral soloist in major music centers and festivals throughout the United States and Europe . Season highlights include appearances at New York's Bargemusic and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival; at Mannes College of Music's Symposium on Charles Wourinen; a concert with the Rossetti Quartet at Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, N.Y.; recitals at the Cosmopolitan Club in New York, the Mendelssohn Club in Rockford, IL, and the Currier Museum in Manchester, N.H.; concerto engagements with the Boston Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra and the Youngstown Symphony in Ohio; and an appearance at the Busoni Festival in Bolzano, Italy, where she performs Elliott Carter's Dialogues (Concerto), the distinguished composer's most recent work for piano and orchestra.
The 2003/04 season began with a performance of Messiaen's epic Vision de l'Amen at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music with festival director Robert Spano at the second piano. Ms. Oppens appeared at the Venice Biennale in a recital of works by Carter, León, Karlins, Nancarrow and Berio; and in Berlin with Michael Gielen and the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester in a performance of Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand . She performed Ligeti's Piano Concerto and Conlon Nancarrow's Canons in the University of Pittsburgh's " Music on the Edge " series; a program of works by Joan Tower, joined by the composer and the Tokyo String Quartet, on Carnegie Hall's "Making Music" series; works by Carter, Bolcomb and Lieberson in Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and several other solo recitals in addition to chamber music appearances with the Pacifica Quartet.
Highlights of recent seasons include residencies and performances at Aspen, Santa Fe and other international music festivals; the New York premiere at Cooper Union of Luciano Berio's Piano Sonata (written for Ms. Oppens); the Henry Cowell Piano Concerto in San Francisco and Dublin; Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl; and Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion with Jerome Lowenthal at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. She performed Lou Harrison's Piano Concerto with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and at the Ruhr Festival on the occasion of the late composer's 85th birthday celebration. Other orchestral engagements included the Copland Piano Concerto in Havana with the Orquesta Nacional de Cuba directed by Bernard Rubinstein, the Rachmaninoff Paganini Variations with the New Hampshire and Memphis symphonies, and a concerto by contemporary Korean composer Unsuk Chin with the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester in Berlin.
At Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall she presided over "The Carnegie Hall Millennium Piano Book," in which she and university students from around the country performed the world premiere of ten short pieces intended for the intermediate-level pianist. The works were commissioned by Carnegie Hall from ten leading composers from around the world, and were simultaneously published by Boosey and Hawkes in a volume which included a CD of Ms. Oppens performing the ten pieces.
Ms. Oppens has presented recitals at New York 's 92nd Street Y, Town Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; at Chicago 's Orchestra Hall and at the Kennedy Center in Washington , D.C. In 1994 she was presented on Carnegie Hall's Keyboard Virtuoso Series and appeared there again in 1997. She often collaborates with chamber groups including the Juilliard, Vermeer, Mendelssohn string quartets, and joined the Arditti Quartet for the Library of Congress premiere and tours in the United States and Europe of Elliott Carter's Piano Quintet . The work was commissioned by the Library of Congress and a consortium of presenters to honor Mr. Carter's 90th birthday. Other activities include masterclasses at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo and at the Music Teachers National Association Conference in Minneapolis.
Throughout her career, an enduring commitment to integrating new music into more traditional concert programs has led Ms. Oppens to commission and premiere many new compositions. Among these are works by Anthony Davis, Elliott Carter, John Harbison, Tania Léon, György Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Tobias Picker, Frederic Rzewski, Lois Vierk, and Charles Wuorinen. She is a co-founder of Speculum Musicae, a performing group which has pioneered new music since 1971.
A native New Yorker, Ursula Oppens first studied piano with her mother, Edith Oppens, and continued with Leonard Shure and Guido Agosti. As an undergraduate at Radcliffe College, she studied English literature and economics, and received her Master's degree from the Juilliard School where she studied with Rosina Lhevinne and Felix Galimir. Ms. Oppens made her New York debut in 1970 under the auspices of Young Concert Artists, and was awarded First Prize at the Busoni International Piano Competition that same year. She was granted a diploma with honors from the Accademia Chigiana in Siena , and in 1976 was the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant which led directly to her debut with the New York Philharmonic.
Ms. Oppens' discography clearly reflects her dedication to music of differing styles and periods. She has recorded a disc of Beethoven sonatas including Op. 106 ("Hammerklavier") and a two-CD set - "American Piano Music of Our Time" - with music by John Adams, Elliott Carter, and works written for her by Julius Hemphill and Conlon Nancarrow. She has recorded the Elliott Carter Piano Quintet with the Arditti Quartet, Joan Tower's Piano Concerto, and a disc of Schoenberg's vocal music with soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson. Ms. Oppens received Grammy nominations both for her recording of Rzewski's The People United Will Never Be Defeated and for "American Piano Music of Our Time," and can be heard on releases from more than a dozen labels including Angel, Audivis, Bridge, CBS Masterworks, CRI, Koch, and Nonesuch.
Ursula Oppens currently holds the position of the John Evans Distinguished Professor of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Nelita True
BM, MM, University of Michigan, Phi Beta Kappa; graduate study, Juilliard, Paris Conservatoire; DMA, Peabody. Major teachers include Leon Fleisher, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Helen Titus, and Nadia Boulanger. Fulbright grant for study in Paris. New York debut with Juilliard Orchestra in Avery Fisher Hall. Soloist with Chicago , Baltimore , and National symphonies, European orchestras. Commercial recordings of over 100 works; hundreds of recitals, master classes, and lectures throughout North America and Europe, People's Republic of China, Iceland, Indonesia, Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia. Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, University of Maryland (1981-87). First American invited to be visiting professor at a conservatory in the former Soviet Union (Leningrad Conservatory, April 1989). Many student prizewinners in national and international piano competitions. Judge for the Gina Bachauer and William Kappell International Piano Competitions, Concours de Musique du Canada, Queen Sonja International Competition in Norway, the First China International Piano Competition, and many others. Faculty member, Interlochen Music Camp (summers, 1964-76), University of Kansas (1963-65), University of Maryland (1967-87), Eastman (1987-).
