There will be 20 PYPA youth participants who are outstanding young pianists, age 12 to 26, selected from a worldwide pool of applicants to learn from international concert masters. The young pianists were invited based on a rigorous selection process that included submitting a written application and an audio recording for review.
Each student participating in PYPA will have the opportunity to learn alongside world-renowned international concert masters led by PYPA Director and Founder Ching-Yun Hu. Other international concert masters include Charles Abramovic, Concert Pianist and Chair of Keyboard Studies at Temple University; Simone Dinnerstein, world renowned pianist who is also a faculty member of the Mannes School of Music at The New School in New York City; Gary Graffman, former Curtis Institute of Music president and Concert Pianist; and Julliard piano faculty and concert pianist Jerome Lowenthal.
Founded by Philadelphia-based concert pianist and recording artist, Ching-Yun Hu, PYPA was launched in 2013 to help young artists from Asia and the West achieve their dreams of professional careers as world class concert pianists. Each of the young artists chosen will experience these special opportunities during the eight day-long PYPA:
- Master classes taught by PYPA Faculty members Ching-Yun Hu, Gary Graffman, Simone Dinnerstein, Charles Abramovic and Jerome Lowenthal.
- The chance to make friends with young artists from around the world
- The opportunity to participate in the Philadelphia International Piano Competition
- Attendance at a new Speaker Series with key people in the classical music industry who will focus on career planning, programming choices, using technology for publicity and more. with guest speakers Pierre van der Westhuizen, who is the executive director of the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, and Jonathan Eifert, who is the president of Jonathan Eifert Public Relations.
About Ching-Yun Hu:
Declared a “first-class talent” and praised for her “poetic use of color and confidently expressive phrasing” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), the distinguished Taiwanese-American concert pianist Ching-Yun Hu is recognized and acclaimed worldwide for her dazzling technique, deeply probing musicality, and directly communicative performance style. After winning top prizes at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv and the Concert Artists Guild International Competition in New York City, her career has taken her to prestigious concert halls and music festivals across the globe on five continents.
Ching-Yun Hu made her debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1999. She has appeared at prestigious concert halls across the globe, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Aspen Music Festival, Wigmore Hall (London), Salle Cortot (Paris), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Herkulesaal (Munich), Klavier-Ruhr Festival, Franz Liszt Academy of Music (Budapest), Duszniki-Dzroj Chopin International Festival and Rubinstein Philharmonic Hall (Poland), Opera House (Tel Aviv), National Concert Hall (Taipei), and Japan’s Osaka Hall.
Considered one of the most important concert pianists from her native Taiwan, Ching-Yun Hu has received honors from the Taiwan Ministry of Culture and the Golden Melody Awards. She is a keen advocate for the promotion of classical music. She founded the Yun-Hsiang International Music Festival in Taipei in 2012, and the Philadelphia Young Pianists’ Academy - PYPA in2013. She serves on the piano faculty of the Boyer College of Music at Temple University in Philadelphia. Ms. Hu is a Steinway Artist. www.chingyunhu.com
About Simone Dinnerstein:
American pianist Simone Dinnerstein is a searching and inventive artist who is motivated by a desire to find the musical core of every work she approaches. The New York-based pianist gained an international following with the remarkable success of her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which she independently raised the funds to record. Released in 2007 on Telarc, it ranked No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Classical Chart in its first week of sales and was named to many “Best of 2007” lists including those of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. Dinnerstein’s performance schedule has taken her around the world since her acclaimed New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2005, to venues including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie, Sydney Opera House, Seoul Arts Center, and London’s Wigmore Hall; festivals that include the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen, Verbier, and Ravinia festivals; and performances with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra a Sinfonica Brasileira, and the Tokyo Symphony. Dinnerstein’s performance schedule has taken her around the world since her acclaimed New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2005, to venues including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie, Sydney Opera House, Seoul Arts Center, and London’s Wigmore Hall; festivals that include the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen, Verbier, and Ravinia festivals; and performances with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra a Sinfonica Brasileira, and the Tokyo Symphony.
About Gary Graffman:
Gary Graffman has been a major figure in the music world since his debut with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of eighteen. For the next three decades he toured almost continuously, playing the most demanding works in the piano literature. His numerous recordings with the orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, and Chicago under such conductors as Bernstein, Ormandy, Szell, and Mehta include concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Brahms, Chopin, and Beethoven; they are still regarded as touchstones. In 1979, however, an injury to his right hand limited Mr. Graffman’s concertizing to the small body of repertoire for left hand alone. Since then seven new works have been commissioned for him, and he continues to have an active performing career. Mr. Graffman’s association with the Curtis Institute of Music began in 1936, when he was accepted, at the age of seven, to study with Isabelle Vengerova. He graduated in 1946. In 1980, following his performance-reducing injury, he joined the Curtis piano faculty. From 1986 through May 2006, he served as director of Curtis, as well as president from 1995 to 2006.
About Charles Abramovic:
Charles Abramovic has won critical acclaim for his international performances as a soloist, chamber musician, and collaborator with leading instrumentalists and singers. He has performed a vast repertoire not only on the piano, but also the harpsichord and fortepiano. Abramovic made his solo orchestral debut at the age of fourteen with the Pittsburgh Symphony. Since then he has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Baltimore Symphony, the Colorado Philharmonic, the Florida Philharmonic, and the Nebraska Chamber Orchestra. He has given solo recitals throughout the United States, France and Yugoslavia. He has also appeared at major international festivals in Berlin, Salzburg, Bermuda, Dubrovnik, Aspen and Vancouver. Abramovic has performed often with such stellar artists as Midori, Sarah Chang, Robert McDuffie, Viktoria Mullova, Kim Kashkashian, Mimi Stillman and Jeffrey Khaner. His recording of the solo piano works of Delius for DTR recordings has been widely praised. He has recorded for EMI Classics with violinist Sarah Chang, and Avie Recordings with Philadelphia Orchestra principal flutist Jeffrey Khaner. Actively involved with contemporary music, he has also recorded works of Milton Babbitt, Joseph Schwantner, Gunther Schuller and others for Albany Records, CRI, Bridge, and Naxos. Abramovic has taught at Temple since 1988. He is an active part of the musical life of Philadelphia, performing with numerous organizations in the city. He is a core member of the Dolce Suono Ensemble and performs often with Network for New Music and Orchestra 2001. In 1997 he received the Career Development Grant from the Philadelphia Musical Fund Society, and in 2003 received the Creative Achievement Award from Temple University. His teachers have included Natalie Phillips, Eleanor Sokoloff, Leon Fleisher, and Harvey Wedeen.
About Jerome Lowenthal:
Jerome Lowenthal, born in 1932, 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. Mr. Lowenthal studied in his native Philadelphia with Olga Samaroff-Stokowski, in New York with William Kapell and Edward Steuermann, and in Paris with Alfred Cortot, meanwhile traveling annually to Los Angeles for coachings with Artur Rubinstein. After winning prizes in three international competitions (Bolzano, Darmstadt, and Brussels), he moved to Jerusalem where, for three years, he played, taught and lectured. Returning to America, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic playing Bartok’s Concerto no. 2 in 1963. Since then, he has performed more-or-less everywhere, from the Aleutians to Zagreb. Conductors with whom he has appeared as soloist include Barenboim, Ozawa, Tilson Thomas, Temirkanov, and Slatkin, as well as such giants of the past as Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, Pierre Monteux and Leopold Stokowski. He has played sonatas with Itzhak Perlman, piano duos with Ronit Amir (his late wife), Carmel Lowenthal (his daughter), and Ursula Oppens, as well as quintets with the Lark, Avalon and Shanghai Quartets. He has recently recorded the complete Annees de Pelerinage of Liszt. His other recordings include concerti by Tschaikovsky and Liszt, solo works by Sinding and Bartok, opera paraphrases by Liszt and Busoni, and chamber-music by Arensky and Taneyev. Teaching, too, is an important part of Mr. Lowenthal’s musical life. For twenty-three years at the Juilliard School and for forty-five summers at the Music Academy of the West, 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.
About Philadelphia Young Pianists’ Academy (PYPA):
Founded in 2013, the Philadelphia Young Pianists’ Academy (PYPA) is recognized as an important learning opportunity for some of the world’s best young concert pianists. PYPA founder Ching-Yun Hu is also the artistic director of the Yun-Hsiang International Music Festival in Taipei. The winner of top prizes at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv and Concert Artists Guild International Competition in New York City, she performs in some of the most prestigious concert halls and music festivals in the world on five continents. Considered one of the most important concert pianists from her native Taiwan, Hu has received honorary recognition from the Taiwanese Cultural Committee and Ministry and the Golden Melody Awards. In addition to performing, she also serves on the faculty at the Esther Boyer College of Music at Temple University in Philadelphia.
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