Concert Pianist; Professor and Head of Piano, Boston Conservatory at Berklee
coming soon
Grand Final Judges - Groups A, B, and C
Michael Lewin
Professor and Head of Piano, Boston Conservatory at BerkleeMichael Lewin is one of America’s foremost concert pianists, winning over audiences in 30 countries with playing of “majestic power and searing emotion.” (The London Times). His career was launched with victories in the Liszt Utrecht International Competition, the American Pianists Association Award and the University of Maryland’s William Kapell International Piano Competition. His numerous recordings have won a Grammy Award and a Roundglass Music Award.
He has appeared as orchestral soloist with the Netherlands Philharmonic, Cairo Symphony, China National Radio Orchestra, Bucharest Philharmonic, Youth Orchestra of the Americas, State Symphony of Greece, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Phoenix, Indianapolis, Miami, North Carolina, West Virginia, Nevada, New Orleans, Colorado, Guadalajara, and Puerto Rico Symphonies. Solo appearances include New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Taiwan’s National Concert Hall, Hong Kong’s City Hall Theatre, Holland’s Muziekcentrum, Moscow’s Great Hall, the Athens Megaron, the National Gallery of Art, the Newport, Ravinia and Spoleto Festivals and PBS Television. His extensive repertoire includes over 40 piano concertos, and he is particularly praised for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy and a host of American and Latin American composers.
Mr. Lewin’s award-winning discography on Sono Luminus, Naxos and Centaur includes a pair of popular Debussy recordings entitled “Beau Soir” and “Starry Night,” the complete piano music of Charles T. Griffes, a collection of Scarlatti Sonatas , his acclaimed all-Liszt debut recording, a Russian album of Scriabin, Balakirev and Glazunov, Bamboula!: a disc of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s piano music, “If I Were a Bird” (piano bird pieces) “Piano Phantoms” (ghost/phantoms inspired works”, and the four Violin/Piano Sonatas by William Bolcom with violinist Irina Muresanu.
Michael Lewin is Professor and Head of Piano at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. He gives master classes worldwide, directs the Boston Conservatory Piano Masters Series and has taught and mentored many prize-winning and successful pianists. He is a Juilliard School graduate and a Steinway Artist. His teachers included Leon Fleisher, Yvonne Lefebure, Adele Marcus and Irwin Freundlich. Please visit www.michaellewin.com for more information.
Assistant Professor of Music and Associate Chair for Performance Activities, Smith CollegeDR. JIAYAN SUN
Assistant Professor of Music and Associate Chair for Performance Activities, Smith CollegePraised by the New York Times for his “revelatory” performances, and by the Toronto Star for his “technically flawless, poetically inspired and immensely assured playing,” pianist Jiayan Sun has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the Chinese and RTÉ (Ireland) National Symphony Orchestras, the Fort Worth and Toledo Symphony Orchestras, the Toronto and Aspen Concert Orchestras, and the Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, and he has conducted the Meiningen Court Orchestra from the keyboard. His performances have been broadcast by the BBC, the RTÉ, China Central Television, and classical music radio stations in North America.
In addition to capturing major prizes in the Leeds, Cleveland, Dublin, and Toronto International Piano Competitions, playing early keyboard instruments and studying historical performance practice have played a significant role in Mr. Sun’s musical activities, with critically acclaimed appearances with the American Classical Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall.
Hailing from Yantai, China, Mr. Sun received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Yoheved Kaplinsky and Stephen Hough. Currently Assistant Professor of Music and the Associate Chair for Performance Activities at Smith College, he has performed Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas, in addition to presenting recital series devoted to the works by Schubert and Chopin.
Faculty, The Juilliard SchoolDr. Yiheng Yang
Faculty, The Juilliard SchoolPianist and fortepianist Yi-heng Yang has been described as an “exquisite
collaborator (Opera News), “suberbly adept (Gramophone)” and noted for her “remarkable expressivity and technique (Early Music Magazine).”Her work spans from collaborations on period instruments with visionary artists such as the Grammy award-winning tenor Karim Sulayman, in their acclaimed and timely album, “Where Only Stars Can Hear Us (Avie Records),” to groundbreaking and provocative explorations into Romantic and Classical performance practice with cellist Kate Bennett Wadsworth (Brahms Cello Sonatas, Deux-Elles), baroque violinist Abigail Karr (Mendelssohn Violin Sonatas, Olde Focus), and harpsichordist Rebecca Cypess (“Sisters Face-to-Face” Acis). In May 2022, she released her first solo fortepiano album, “Free Spirits: early Romantic music on the Graf piano (Deux-Elles),” which is already receiving critical praise, including a 4-star rating by BBC Music Magazine. Of this recording on an original 19th c Graf piano, Anne E. Johnson of Classical Voice North America writes that “Yang’s performance of these early Romantic works on one of the best instruments from that era takes us as close to the original experience as we can ever hope to come.”
Yi-heng has performed with the Albany Symphony, in the People’s Symphony Concerts, Early Music of the Islands, Carnegie Hall, The Phillips Collection, Chatham Baroque, Columbus Early Music, and The Helicon Series, the Boston Early Music Festival, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is on the faculty of The Juilliard School.
Her new album of Schumann Piano Trios with Tio Ilona (Ravenna Lipchik and Kate Wadsworth), was released on May 24th on the Deux-Elles label, and has acclaimed as “fascinating (The Strad)”, and “endlessly satisfying (Early Music America).”
Grand Final Judges - Groups D and E
Associate Professor of Piano, Eastman School of MusicRan Dank
Associate Professor of Piano, Eastman School of MusicA rare blend of virtuosity and intellectual prowess, Pianist Ran Dank has proven himself as one of the most thoughtful, and engaging pianists of our time.
Mr. Dank’s past seasons’ performances have included recitals at the San Francisco Performances Series, Gilmore, Ravinia, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel and Weill Halls, Steinway Hall, Gardner Museum, Kennedy Center, Town Hall, Yale School of Music, Philips Collection, Morgan Library, Pro Musica in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Portland Ovations, and have garnered critical acclaim from the New York Times and The Washington Post. Mr. Dank has performed as a soloist with the orchestras of Cleveland, Sydney, St. Luke’s, Portland, Eugene, Toledo, Hawaii, Kansas City, Vermont, Charleston, Jerusalem, Valencia, Phoenix, Hilton Head, among others, working under the batons such as Michael Stern, Jahja Ling, Michael Christie, Kirill Karabits, Jun Märkl, Pinchas Zukerman, Jorge Mester, Jaime Laredo, and Ken-David Masur. Mr. Dank’s recent performance of the monumental set of variations “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” at the University of Chicago has been selected as one of the top ten performances of 2017 by the Chicago Classical Review.
The recipient of numerous honors, Ran Dank won a coveted place on the Young Concert Artists roster in 2009 and subsequently made his New York recital and Kennedy Center debuts. He has also won top prizes at the Cleveland International Competition, the Naumburg International Piano Competition, the Sydney International Piano Competition, and the Hilton Head International Piano Competition.
- First Prize Winner, Leeds International Piano Competition
Eric Lu
First Prize Winner, Leeds International Piano Competition“Leeds winner Eric Lu showed an astonishing command of keyboard tone and color… the sign he is already a true artist. It was a spellbinding experience.”
– The Guardian“Lu’s playing is in a rare class – sensitive and emotionally intuitive.”
– BBC Music MagazineEric Lu won First Prize at The Leeds International Piano Competition in 2018 at the age of 20. The following year, he signed an exclusive contract with Warner Classics, and has since collaborated with some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, and presented in major recital venues.
Recent and forthcoming orchestral collaborations include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Orchestre National de Lille, Finnish Radio Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony, Shanghai Symphony at the BBC Proms, amongst others. Conductors he collaborates with include Riccardo Muti, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Ryan Bancroft, Marin Alsop, Duncan Ward, Vasily Petrenko, Edward Gardner, Sir Mark Elder, Thomas Dausgaard, Ruth Reinhardt, Earl Lee, Nuno Coelho, Kerem Hasan, Long Yu, and Martin Frӧst.
Active as a recitalist, he is presented on stages including the Köln Philharmonie,
Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Queen Elizabeth Hall London, Leipzig Gewandhaus,
Elbphilharmonie, San Francisco Davies Hall, BOZAR Brussels, Fondation Louis Vuitton Paris, Aspen Music Festival, 92nd St Y NY, Seoul Arts Centre, Warsaw Philharmonic, and Sala São Paulo. In 2025, he is appearing for the 7th consecutive year in recital at Wigmore Hall. He has also been invited for the 7th time to Warsaw’s ‘Chopin and his Europe Festival’, and will debut at La Roque d’Anthéron Festival.In December 2022, Eric’s third album on Warner Classics was released, featuring Schubert Sonatas D. 959 and 784. It was met with critical acclaim, receiving BBC Music Magazine’s Instrumental Choice, writing, “Lu’s place among today’s Schubertians is confirmed”. His previous album of the Chopin 24 Preludes, and Schumann’s Geistervariationen was hailed ‘truly magical’ by International Piano.
Born in Massachusetts in 1997, Eric Lu first came to international attention as a Laureate of the 2015 Chopin International Competition in Warsaw aged just 17. He was also awarded the International German Piano Award in 2017, and Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2021. Eric was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2019-22. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Robert McDonald and Jonathan Biss. He was also a pupil of Dang Thai Son.
Penelope P. Watkins Chair in Piano Studies, Curtis Institute; Faculty, The Juilliard SchoolRobert McDonald
Penelope P. Watkins Chair in Piano Studies, Curtis Institute; Faculty, The Juilliard SchoolAmerican pianist Robert McDonald has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia as solo recitalist and, for many years, as recital partner to Isaac Stern and other distinguished instrumentalists. He has appeared with the San Francisco, Baltimore and Curtis symphony orchestras as well as with the Orquestra Sinfonica Nacional in Costa Rica and the Orchestra Sinfonica Haydn di Bolzano e Trento in Italy.
As a chamber musician, he has performed with the Juilliard, American, Takács, Muir, Brentano, St. Lawrence, Vermeer, Borromeo, Shanghai, and Orion string quartets, and has given concerts for the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Chicago Chamber Musicians and NHK and BBC television worldwide. His discography includes recordings for Sony Classical, Vox, Bridge,
Musical Heritage Society, ASV and CRI.
McDonald is a member of the piano faculties at The Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he holds the Penelope P. Watkins Chair in piano studies. In addition to being the artistic director of the Taos School of Music and Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico, he has participated in the Bergen, Lucerne and Salzburg festivals in Europe, the Four Seasons,
Marlboro and Brevard festivals in the United States, the Steans Institute at Ravinia, as well as at the Banff Center in Canada and the Music Academy of the West.
McDonald is the winner of the Gold Medal at the Busoni International Competition and the Deutsche Schallplatten Critics Award. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music in 2018.
