Collaborator

Jason Kim, piano

Program

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58
     I. Allegro moderato
     II. Andante con moto
     III. Rondo (Vivace)
Jung-eun Kim, piano

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18
     I. Moderato
     II. Adagio sostenuto
     III. Allegro scherzando
Parker van Ostrand, piano

Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26
     I. Andante – Allegro 
     II. Tema con variazioni
     III. Allegro, ma non troppo
Jon Lee, piano

Judge Profiles

Pianist Elizabeth Schumann has a diverse career portfolio of performances, projects, and recordings. The Washington Post noted her playing as “deft, relentless, and devastatingly good—the sort of performance you experience not so much with your ears as your solar plexus.”
Elizabeth has performed solo recitals at the Kennedy Center, Ravinia’s “Rising Stars” Series, Vienna’s Bösendorfer Saal, Australia’s Huntington Festival, Toronto’s Koerner Hall, and on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today”. The first place winner of the Bösendorfer International Piano Competition and Pacific International Piano Competition, she was awarded over 25 prizes in other major competitions, including the Cleveland, Hilton Head, Montreal, and World International Piano Competitions. Elizabeth was honored with the prestigious Gilmore Young Artists Award and was highlighted in the PBS television documentary on the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival. 
Passionate about sharing the profound experience of classical music with all audiences, Elizabeth devised and directed Piano Carnival, a project to introduce a free, high quality musical experience to children without access to arts education. Over 20,000 free copies of the Piano Carnival book, CD, and iPad application have been distributed, and Piano Carnival workshops have toured the USA, Canada, and Australia. 
Carrying on the pedagogical tradition of her teacher, Sergei Babayan, Elizabeth is a member of the piano faculty at Stanford University, and has been on faculty at Itzhak Perlman’s Perlman Music Program, Summer and Winter Performing Arts at Juilliard, and the Crowden Chamber Workshop. She is the director of the Schumann Studio, a classical recording space in San Francisco.

Acclaimed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as a commanding solo player, the most supportive of accompanists, and a leader in chamber music pianist Jeffrey Sykes has performed across four continents and collaborates regularly with leading instrumentalists and singers.
Sykes is a founding member of the San Francisco Piano Trio and the co- founder and artistic co-director of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society in Madison, Wisconsin (www.bachdancing.org), a highly-acclaimed and innovative chamber music festival now in its 32nd season. He was recently appointed interim artistic director of the Cactus Pear Music Festival in San Antonio, Texas (www.cpmf.us), now in its 27th season.
For eighteen years, Dr. Sykes served as the Music Director of Opera for the Young, a company that has introduced more than two million children to opera. He teaches piano, chamber music, and vocal coaching at the University of California–Berkeley and California State University–East Bay.

Hailed as “irresistibly fluid” and “illuminating” by the New York Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dr. Eric Zuber has been established as one of the leading American pianists of his generation. He has been a recipient of prizes from major international piano competitions including Arthur Rubinstein, Cleveland, Seoul, Sydney, and Dublin. He was also awarded Gold Medals in both the Hilton Head and USASU Bösendorfer International Piano Competitions and is a Laureate of the American Pianists Association Classical Fellowship Awards.
After making his orchestral debut at the age of twelve with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, he has performed with many of the major orchestras in the United States and abroad including Cleveland, Israel, Indianapolis, Minnesota, and the Royal Philharmonic. Dr. Zuber has also made solo appearances at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, the Sydney Opera House, Seoul Arts Center, Severance Hall and for the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York City.
Born in Baltimore, Dr. Zuber received degrees from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University (B.M., A.D., D.M.A.), the Juilliard School (M.M.) and the Curtis Institute (Diploma) where he studied with Boris Slutsky, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, and Robert McDonald. He is currently serving as Assistant Professor of Piano at Michigan State University.