Meet our Faculty Artists
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ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Pianist Yury Shadrin, an internationally acclaimed soloist and recitalist, has appeared in major venues across four continents including the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. In recent seasons he has performed in concerts at Pierre Boulez Hall, China’s Central Conservatory of Music and Nanning EXPO Center, The Juilliard School, Eastman School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, and Oberlin Conservatory.
As an orchestral soloist, Mr. Shadrin has performed with the Baltimore, Kalamazoo, Miami, and Salta (Argentina) Symphony Orchestras, Gilmore Festival Chamber Orchestra, Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica of Venezuela, the Caracas Municipal Symphony, Philippines Philharmonic, and the Vietnam National Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the orchestras of Peabody and Oberlin Conservatories. He has firmly established his recital credentials as well, with recent performances with Washington Performing Arts, Stars of the White Nights Festival on a program with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with other prestigious presenters in North America, South America, and Europe. His performances have been featured in radio and TV broadcasts in Vietnam, Venezuela, China, Japan, and the United States.
Highlights of the 2019-20 season include invitation from Daniel Barenboim to perform with the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Steinway Series at Silo Hill, residencies at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent and London’s Royal College of Music. Last season, Shadrin gave recitals throughout Europe, including Konzerthaus Berlin and other major halls in Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland by invitation from Sir András Schiff. In addition to his own performance career, Mr. Shadrin is a celebrated educator and serves as Artistic Director of the Leon Fleisher Academy.
Mr. Shadrin gained international recognition as a first prize winner of the Rome International Piano Competition and Grand Prize winner at the Siberian Piano Competition. In recent years, he has taken top honors at the World Piano Competition, the Maracaibo International Piano Competition, and the Yale Gordon Competition.
A Moscow Conservatory graduate, Mr. Shadrin studied with world-renowned pianists Lev Naumov and Eliso Virsaladze. Upon moving to the United States, he studied at the Oberlin Conservatory with Monique Duphil, at Yale with Peter Frankl, and at Peabody Conservatory with the great American master Leon Fleisher.
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Composition
An accomplished international performer, pianist Tian Lu has appeared as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout Asia, the United States, Europe, and South America. Recent guest appearances include The Julliard School, Eastman School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music as well as her debut recital at the Kennedy Center with Washington Performing Arts. Her worldwide success includes top prizes in International piano competition in memory of Emil Gilels, Missouri Southern International Piano Competition, Jaen International piano competition, World international piano competition in Cincinnati. Ms. Lu appearance included concerto performances with the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra (Ukraine), Venezuela Sinfonica, Concert Artists of Baltimore Orchestra, Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, Oberlin Orchestra, The Symphony of Westchester, performances at the Duxbury Music Festival with Stars Festival Orchestra. Chamber music concert with the Baltimore Symphony orchestra members and was invited by the China Keyboard Society to play piano duo concerts and giving master classes in China. Currently Ms. Lu serving as a Chairwoman of the IAC International Piano Competition and Co-Artistic Director of the Baltimore International Piano Festival.
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Consistently acclaimed for his exquisite tonal beauty and superb artistry, Boris Slutsky has appeared on nearly every continent as a soloist and recitalist, collaborating with eminent conductors and major orchestras in the United States, Europe, Canada, Israel, Latin America, and Asia. He has won first prizes in the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Piano Competition, the San Antonio International Keyboard Competition, and the William Kapell International Piano Competition, where he also received the Audience Prize and the William Backhaus Award. Also an avid chamber musician, Slutsky’s almost three decades of chamber music collaborations include the critically acclaimed recording of Schumann’s Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Ilya Kaler (Naxos), as well as performances with many other renowned artists.
At the Yale School of Music, Mr. Slutsky is a Professor of Piano, teaching a studio of graduate-level pianists. He has been featured in a performance on Yale’s Horowitz Piano Series. Before coming to Yale, Slutsky was a faculty member at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, visiting faculty at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University, and Visiting Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music. He has also served as a jury member of many international piano competitions and presented masterclasses throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. His students have won prizes at numerous prestigious international events.
Born in Moscow to a family of musicians, Slutsky received his early training at Moscow’s Gnessin School for Gifted Children as a student of Anna Kantor, and completed his formal studies at the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music, studying with Nadia Reisenberg, Nina Svetlanova, John Browning, and Joseph Seiger. In addition, he has worked for many years with his mentor Alexander Eydeleman.
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Following recent debuts with the Chicago, Pittsburgh and London symphony orchestras, Lukáš Vondráček has a season packed with highlights ahead of him. In 2021/22 he will debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at Hollywood Bowl and return to renowned orchestras such as Baltimore and Chicago symphony orchestras, both under the baton of Marin Alsop. Elsewhere Lukáš Vondráček will appear with Orchestre National de Lille conducted by Lionel Bringuier, Warsaw Philharmonic as well as the Turku and Malmö symphony orchestras. Recital projects will take him to the Rudolf Firkusny Piano Festival at Prague’s Rudolfinum and the Kissinger Summer Festival. He will take his residency with the Janáček Philharmonic into the next season and continue his recording cycle of all Rachmaninov Piano concertos with Prague Symphony Orchestra.
Over the last decade Lukáš Vondráček has travelled the world working with orchestras such as the Philadelphia, Tasmanian and Sydney Symphony orchestras, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt Symphony Radio Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic and Netherlands Philharmonic orchestras.Recitals have led him to Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Flagey in Brussels, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Wiener Konzerthaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and to renowned festivals such as Menuhin Festival Gstaad, PianoEspoo in Finland, Prague Spring Festival and Lille Piano Festival.
At the age of four Lukáš Vondráček made his first public appearance. He has achieved worldwide recognition by receiving many international awards, foremost the Grand Prix at the 2016 Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels alongside first prizes at the Hilton Head and San Marino International Piano Competitions and Unisa International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa, as well as the Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award at the 2009 International Van Cliburn Piano Competition.
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Ken Johansen was born in Denmark, and grew up in Dallas, Texas. His studies took him first to San Francisco, where he studied with Alain Naudé, a pupil of Dinu Lipatti and Nadia Boulanger; then to Paris, where he studied piano with Gaby Casadesus, and musicianship (harmony, counterpoint, solfège, and score reading) with Narcis Bonet, also a former student of Boulanger and her successor as director of the Conservatoire Americain at Fontainebleau. He holds a Masters degree from the Peabody Conservatory, and a DMA from the University of North Texas, both in piano performance. He has been teaching keyboard skills for piano majors at Peabody since 2002.
Ken Johansen has published article on various topics relating to piano music and pedagogy in American Music Teacher, Clavier, Journal of the American Liszt Society, Piano and Keyboard, and La Revue de Musicologie. He is the creator of From the Ground Up, an extensive series of study editions of various piano works, published on the British website, practisingthepiano.com. He is one of the co-inventors of Read Ahead, a piano sight-reading app that was developed with funding from the Maryland Innovation Initiative.
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Composition
Zhiyi Wang is a highly acclaimed composer in the contemporary classical and film genres. His compositions have been performed by renowned artists like Yuri Bashmet, Sarah Brightman, and Lang Lang, as well as groups such as the China National Symphony Orchestra, Brno Philharmonic, Senzoku Gakuen New Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird, Moscow Soloists, Lviv Chamber Orchestra and many others across Asia, North America, and Europe. Wang was a core member of the music crew at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, where he composed various music programs for the Opening Ceremony. He has won numerous top prizes from International Composition Competitions and has also been Composer-in-Residence at several distinguished institutions. Since 2019, the Winter International Arts Festival in Sochi has commissioned him to create new music for Yuri Bashmet and Moscow Soloists for its opening and closing concerts. In June 2022, his piano piece, Etude for Concert, was performed at Carnegie Hall. Wang has been recognized for his exceptional film music with awards from Global Music Awards and nominations from World Soundtrack Awards, Hollywood Music in Media Awards, Golden Rooster Awards, and China Academy Awards for Documentary Film. He recently received the prestigious Huabiao Film Awards, the highest honor in China's film industry, for his original score in The Battle at Lake Changjin. This film has now become the champion of China's all-time box office. His music is included in the music textbook for middle schools throughout China. Wang holds a Bachelor;s and Master;s degree in music composition from the Oberlin College Conservatory and the University of Louisville, respectively. He has received an Alumni Award from both institutions for his achievements. Wang is a member of The Recording Academy and World Soundtrack Academy. He serves on the jury at the LIT Music Awards and Tencent Wave Music Committee. Wang is an appointed Industry Mentor at the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music and has been a guest faculty at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He resides in California.
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Pianist Kwan Yi has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kimmel Center, Kennedy Center, Chicago Symphony Center, Mann Performing Arts Center, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, Library of Congress, Metropolitan and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museums, Großer Sendesaal des Hessischen Rundfunks, Auditorium du Louvre, Suntory Hall, and Seoul Arts Center.
Yi has appeared as a soloist with the Russian National Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the Brevard Festival Orchestra under the batons of Hans Graf, Julian Kuerti, and Mikhail Tartanikov. As a recitalist and masterclass instructor, he has completed residencies at Bowling Green State University, University of Georgia, and Michigan State University. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Miriam Fried, and Roberto Diaz on national tours and was invited to perform at the Kronberg, Ravinia, Trondheim, and the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festivals and Carnegie Hall Presents, Curtis Presents, CIM Mixon Hall Masters, and Peoples’ Symphony Concert Series. He has recorded for FHR and Hänssler labels with violinist Itamar Zorman.
A recipient of many honors and prizes, Yi’s awards include Mieczyslaw Munz Prize, National Federation of Music Clubs Award, and prizes in the Sendai International Piano Competition.
Yi is a graduate of the Curtis Institute, Juilliard School and the Peabody Institute where he worked with Leon Fleisher and Robert McDonald. He currently serves as assistant professor of piano at the ECU School of Music.