Judges

Phillip Kawin has been a member of the piano faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, where he has worked with a select studio of advanced, award-winning pupils since 1989. He has developed his own teaching style, which encompasses his personal artistic and aesthetic beliefs, while combining analytical and intuitive aspects of technique and musicianship. Coming from diverse corners of the globe, the students in Kawin’s studio over the past 18 years have won top honors in such competitions as the Martha Argerich International, Jacob Flier International, World Piano, Thelonious Monk International (jazz piano), Melilla, Heida Hermanns, Soulima Stravinsky International, Josef Hofmann, Dora Zaslavsky Koch, Mieczyslaw Munz, Eisenberg/Fried, Kingsville International, Leschetizky and Young Concert Artists competitions.

American born, Kawin studied with Jules Gentil at L’école Normale de Musique de Paris, where he graduated with honors at age eighteen, and later with Dora Zaslavsky Koch at the Manhattan School of Music. His teachers have also included John Perry, Gary Graffman and Artur Balsam. In addition to his positions in the college and precollege divisions at the Manhattan School of Music, Mr. Kawin is frequently in demand as a guest master class artist-teacher throughout the U.S., Asia, Europe, Russia and Australia. He has given classes and performed at such institutions as Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts; Seoul National University; National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaoshiung, Taiwan; Taiwan National Academy of Arts in Taipei; London Music Festival at Middlesex University; Italy's Meranofest; Moscow Conservatory International Summer School; International Academy of Music (IAM) in Russia, Spain, and Italy; Russia’s St. Petersburg Conservatory; Queensland Conservatorium/Griffith University; University of Melbourne; Sydney Conservatorium; and Australian National Academy of Music; Columbia Music Teachers Association; PianoSummer at New Paltz, as artist faculty for ten consecutive years, Summit Music Festival in New York; Cliburn Piano Institute in Texas; and the World Piano Pedagogy Conference, where he has been an active presenter since 2004.

He has served as an overseas advisor for the Youth Music Foundation and as a competition adjudicator for a variety of organizations, including Bösendorfer USA, Lennox International Young Artists in Texas, The Juilliard School, Schubert Club of Minnesota and the Van Cliburn International Competition for Outstanding Amateurs. He has served as a member of the adjudicating board for the National Alliance for Excellence, an independent organization that awards merit-based scholarships in the arts, and is currently a member of the board of the World Piano Pedagogy Conference and the Leschetizky Association in New York. Mr. Kawin can be observed on DVD teaching and presenting his multi-media lectures and master classes released by Excellence in Music, Inc. Phillip Kawin is a Steinway artist.

Dubbed "a major artist" by the Miami Herald and a "quiet maverick" by the Daily Telegraph, pianist Alexander Korsantia has been praised for the "clarity of his technique, richly varied tone and dynamic phrasing" by the Baltimore Sun, and a "piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist" by the Calgary Sun. The Boston Globe found his interpretation of Pictures of an Exhibition to be "a performance that could annihilate all others one has heard." And the Birmingham Post gushed that "his intensely responsive reading was shot through with a vein of constant fantasy, whether musing or mercurial." Ever since winning the first prize and gold medal of the Artur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and the first prize at the Sidney International Piano Competition, Korsantia's career has taken him to many of the world's major concert halls, collaborating with renowned conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Christoph Eschenbach, and Paavo Jarvi and orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Kirov Orchestra and Israel Philharmonic.

Seasons 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 bring him to the Cincinnati Symphony, Pacific, Omaha and Elgin symphonies following a summer stint with the Israel Philharmonic under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos where he performed Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and the 2nd Brahms Piano Concerto nine times. In Europe he is heard in Germany on tour with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, performing Chopin's 2nd Piano Concerto, as well as with the Noeburg Chamber Orchestra. In August 2008 he is touring Brazil with Israel Symphony Orchestra performing Rachmaninoff's Second concerto. He is also scheduled to give recitals at the Festival Piano Jacobins in Toulouse, Calgary, San Francisco, Lodz, and his hometown, Tbilisi, Georgia and perform with the Polish Radio Orchestra.

The highlights of the 2004-2006 seasons were performances of Prokofiev's Third Concerto and Mozart's B flat major Concerto with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto with RAI Orchestra in Turin, the Dvorak Concerto with the Jerusalem Symphony and Oslo Philharmonic and the Stravinsky Concerto with the Israel Chamber Orchestra, Vancouver, Omaha, Oregon, Louisville Symphony Orchestras and a tour throughout Italy with the Georgian State Symphony.

Other noteworthy engagements have included a televised performance of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 at the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg; performances at the Stresa Festival in Italy under the baton of Yuri Bashmet; concerts at the Newport, Tanglewood, Vancouver, Gilmore festivals; with the symphony orchestras of Louisville, Brazil, Bogota, Jerusalem and the City of Birmingham, the Georgian State Orchestra, the Kirov Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and others. He has also participated in a United States recital tour with renowned violinist Vadim Repin. Bel Air Music is releasing live recordings of Mr. Korsantia on a double CD due in Summer 2008.

Enjoying great popularity in his country of birth, Korsantia performed at the inauguration of Georgian President Saakashvili in 2004, a year after National TV released a full-length documentary about him. In 1999, he was awarded one of the most prestigious national awards, the Medal of Honor, bestowed on him by then-President, Eduard Shevardnadze.

Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Korsantia began his musical studies at an early age. Among his mentors are his mother, Sventlana Korsantia and Tengiz Amiredjibi, Georgia's foremost piano instructor. In 1992, he moved his family to the United States and joined the famed piano studio of fellow Georgian, Alexander Toradze, at Indiana University. Korsantia resides in Boston where he is a professor of piano on the faculty of the New England Conservatory.

HaeSun Paik has performed throughout the world following her triumphs at major international piano competitions including a gold medal in the 1989 William Kapell International Competition, a silver medal in the 1991 Queen Elisabeth International piano Competition and bronze medal in the 1994 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition as well as a prize in the 1990 Leeds International Piano Competition.

Paik has received critical acclaim for her "sublime musicianship" and "stunning virtuosity." Following her sold out New York recital debut, The New York Times stated: "In programming as well as performance, one could hardly have asked more from a debut recital. Ms. Paik seemed every bit the major talent her advanced billing suggested." Following her Los Angeles debut in the Wilshire Ebell Theater critics noted that "She was a sensitive and thinking musician first and an awesome technician second."

Paik has appeared with leading orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra , Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, KBS Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Belgium, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic and Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.

In addition to concerto performances, she has appeared frequently in recitals including New York's Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.,
Bank of Boston Celebrity Series at Jordan Hall, Boston and also in concert halls around the world in major cities of Europe, North America, South America and Asia.

She has appeared in music festivals throughout the United States and abroad including Monadnock Music Festival in New Hampshire, Beethoven Festival in Munich (Germany), Radio France Festival in Montpellier (France), Courchevel Music Festival (France), Bejing International Music Festival & Academy (China), Agassiz Music Festival (Canada) and Busan Music Festival in Korea.

Her recent concert engagements include solo appearances with Osaka Century Symphony Orchestra and Kyushu Symphony Orchestra, Asian Star Gala concert tour in Japan, Russian National Orchestra tour in Korea with Mikhail Pletnev, duo concert tour with cellist Mischa Maisky, recitals at 100 International Pianist Series in Japan and also in France, South America, China, Korea, among others.

Ilana Vered is synonymous with vibrant piano virtuosity since the earliest days of this compelling artist's career. "Shattering," "magnificent," "dazzling," "splendid" are words critics have used all over the world to describe her on the concert stage. Renowned for the white-hot intensity of her performances, Vered now comes before her public as a musician whose art has achieved a rare balance between passion and intellect, temperament and reflection.

Vered, who has repeatedly demonstrated sovereign musical and technical command over some forty-five concertos – from Bach to Berg – has already recorded for the London label highly lauded versions of the concertos of Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninov. She has committed to disc the complete set of Beethoven's five piano concertos with the Warsaw Philharmonic under the baton of Kazimierz Kord, released in late 1993 by the ProArte label. Vered has to her credit a highly-praised version of the complete Chopin Etudes, Opp. 10 and 25, a brilliant recording of the complete Moszkowski Etudes, both for Connoir Records and Connoisseur Records has release a disc entitled 25 Virtuoso Etudes on which Vered offers new readings of concert etudes by Chopin, Schumann, Paganini-Liszt and Debussy.

Vered began playing the piano at the age of three, and later attended the Paris Conservatory where she studied with the eminent pianist Vlado Perlemuter. Born in Israel, she graduated from the Paris Conservatory at fifteen and completed her studies at the Juilliard School in New York City under the tutorship of Rosina Lhevinne, Nadia Reisenberg and Aube Tzerko. She made her debut as one of the first winners of the Young Concert Artists International Competition.

She has been heard in recital in virtually all of the music centers of the world, and has been engaged and re-engaged as soloist with the leading orchestras of our time: the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, and Philharmonia, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Japan NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Israel Philharmonic. She has performed as soloist under the batons of most of the world's finest conductors, including Stokowski, Solti, Mehta, Kempe, Kondrashin, Tilson Thomas, de Waart, Slatkin, Comissiona, Conlon, Davis, Sanderling, Cassadesus, Bertini, Weller, Sawalich, Atzmon, Leppard, rodan, Judd, Foster, Bamert, Janson and Vanska. A regular participant in summer festivals, Vered has made appearances at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, Chicago's Ravinia Festival, Tanglewood, Caramoor, Cleveland's Blossom Festival, the Meadow-brooks Festival in Detroit and at Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl.

Vered is a chamber musician of distinction and has appeared with important chamber ensembles throughout the world. She is noted particularly for her frequent performances with the Tokyo String Quartet. A highlight of this collaboration was Vered's world premiere performance with the ensemble of Ezra Laderman's Piano Quintet at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. This work, which was written for Vered and the Tokyo String Quartet, was later recorded by them for the RCA label.