L’Art du piano 2025

Described by the Los Angeles Times as playing with "blazing enthusiasm, power, and technical  assurance,” Canadian pianist, Micah Yui, has had a versatile performance career.

Yui made her solo recital at the age of ten and orchestral debut at the age of thirteen in Canada.  She has given solo recitals around the world, including venues in Zurich, Tokyo, New York,  Toronto and Copenhagen. Yui has given radio performances on CBC, NHK, and WQXR and  orchestral performances with the Syracuse, Edmonton, Victoria, Montreal Metropolitan, Asheville, and Baltimore Chamber orchestras. As a chamber musician, Yui has performed with many of the preeminent performing artists in the country. She is the recipient of three Canada Council grants, two Ontario Arts Council grants, the Alberta Achievement Award and the Edmonton Civic Award. Her recording with the London Symphony of Ernest Bloch’s concerto  symphonique and scherzo fantasque won “Record of the Year” from Stereophile Magazine.

Yui is passionate about impacting the lives of young people of all ages and levels through music. She has been on the faculty at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, the Peabody Institute, Music Institute of Chicago, and the Heifetz Institute. Her students have won numerous national and international competitions and have been accepted into prestigious music conservatories and schools of music around the country. Yui is currently on the piano faculty at the Colburn School in both the Academy and the Community School teaching studio piano and chamber music. At the Colburn School, she created the Piano Camp Intensive, a unique summer piano camp for young piano students ages nine to thirteen. She is also the founder and co-director the Colburn Summer Piano Seminar for advanced high school pianists which will be collaborating with Tonebase this summer. She is regularly invited to judge in competitions and most recently was on the screening jury for the Esther Honens International Piano Competition.

Born in Japan of Korean heritage, Yui immigrated to Canada at the age of eight. She is the graduate of the Juilliard School, Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, University of Toronto, and the Peabody Conservatory. She has worked with many musicians who have impacted her playing and teaching. Her most influential private teachers were Leon Fleisher, Bella Davidovich, Marietta Orlov, and her first teachers, Boris Zarankin and Inna Perkis. She has also worked extensively with Giovanni Valentini in Pesaro, Italy. She spent six summers at the Banff Arts Centre where she worked on solo and chamber repertoire with Menahem Pressler as well as with John Perry. Her love of lieder has led her to work with renowned lieder pianist, Graham Johnson.

Yui currently lives in Los Angeles

Joanna MacGregor (CBE), qui est pianiste, conceptrice de concerts et chef d’orchestre, est l’une des musiciennes les plus innovatrices du monde. Directrice du département de piano de la Royal Academy of Music professeure à l’Université de Londres, Joanna MacGregor a été la directrice artistique du Dartington International Summer School & Festival de 2014 à 2019, directrice artistique du Festival international de musique de Bath de 2006 à 2012, et conceptrice des programmes du festival multidisciplinaire Deloitte Ignite à la Royal Opera House et de la série de concerts orchestraux Aventures+ à la Philharmonie Luxembourg. Elle dirige un festival estival annuel à la Royal Academy, où se réunissent 100 jeunes étudiants pour jouer les grands classiques et collaborer avec des compositeurs, des acteurs, des artistes en arts visuels, des écrivains et des cinéastes. Joanna MacGregor vient d’être nommée directrice musicale et chef principale de l’Orchestre philharmonique de Brighton, à l’aube du centenaire de celui-ci.

Joanna MacGregor s’est produite comme soliste dans plus de 80 pays et a joué sous la baguette de chefs notoires — notamment Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, Valery Gergiev, Sir Simon Rattle et Michael Tilson Thomas — et en compagnie d’orchestres de premier plan comme les orchestres symphoniques de Londres, de Sydney et de Berlin, les orchestres philharmoniques de Chicago, de Melbourne et d’Oslo, et la Camerata Salzburg. Elle a donné la première de nombreuses compositions importantes, allant des œuvres de Sir Harrison Birtwistle à celles de Django Bates en passant par celles de John Adams et de James MacMillan. Elle se produit régulièrement dans des salles importantes du monde entier, notamment Wigmore Hall, le Southbank Centre et le Barbican Centre de Londres, la Sydney Opera House, la Leipzig Gewandhaus, le Concertgebouw d’Amsterdam et le Mozarteum de Salzbourg.

Italian pianist Fabio Bidini is one of his generation’s top-flight pianists. His appearances have included performances with London Symphony Orchestra at The Barbican, Philharmonia Orchestra of London at Royal Festival Hall, San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Dallas Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Forth Worth Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra Prague at the Rudolphinum, and Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra at Liszt Academy Hall. He has collaborated with conductors including Michael Tilson Thomas, Carlos Prieto, Max Valdes, Dimitry Sitkovetsky, Ivan Fisher, Jesus Lopez Cobos, JoAnn Falletta, Zoltan Kocsis, Michael Christie, and Gianandrea Noseda.

Fabio Bidini is in great demand as a chamber music partner. He is the pianist of the highly acclaimed ensemble, Los Angeles Piano Trio and has enjoyed artistic collaboration with many ensembles and artists including Trio Solisti, Modigliani Quartet, American String Quartet, Janacek Quartet, Brodsky Quartet, Szymanowski Quartet, Zoltan Kocsis, Alexis Pia Gerlach, Maria Bachmann, Eva Urbanova, Nina Kotova, Dimitri Ashkenazy, and Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker.

Mr. Bidini has repeatedly performed at the prestigious festivals of Europe, including the Tuscan Sun Festival Cortona/Napa, Festival Radio France Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, La Roque d’Anthéron International Piano Festival, Stern Grove Festival, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli International Piano Festival, Festival dei due Mondi and most recently, Grant Park Festival.

Fabio Bidini began his piano studies at the age of five. He graduated magna cum laude from Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and studied composition at Florence Conservatory. He has been awarded first prize in eleven of Italy’s most prestigious national piano competitions and has been the recipient of the top prizes awarded in eight international competitions - Terni, Köln, Busoni 1988 and 1992, Pretoria, Marsala, London and the Van Cliburn Fort Worth. He made his North American debut in 1993 with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

In 2015 Fabio Bidini became the first recipient of the Carol Grigor Piano Chair – a new position enabled by a $5,000,000 endowment gift from the Colburn School’s board chairwoman Carol Colburn Grigor in Los Angeles. Mr. Bidini has been Professor of Piano at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, in Berlin, one of Europe’s premiere music conservatories. He also serves as an Artist-in-Residence at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Köln.

Fabio Bidini’s discography comprises thirteen CDs recorded under the labels BMG, Classichord, Musikstrasse, EPR and True Sounds. He is a Steinway artist.

Hung-Kuan Chen, l’un des pianistes les plus reconnus de sa génération, a remporté des premiers prix aux concours internationaux de piano Arthur Rubinstein, Busoni et Geza Anda, ainsi qu’aux auditions internationales de Young Concert Artists. Il a également remporté des prix aux concours internationaux de piano Queen Elisabeth, Van Cliburn et CMIM (Concours musical international de Montréal), et une bourse Avery Fisher de soutien à la carrière.

M. Chen fait présentement partie du corps enseignant de la Juilliard School et est professeur invité à l’Université Yale, en plus d’enseigner à l’Artemisia Akademie de Yale. Il a auparavant dirigé le département de piano du Conservatoire de Shanghai et fait partie du corps enseignant du Conservatoire de la Nouvelle-Angleterre. Il a fait partie du jury d’importants concours internationaux de piano, notamment celui de Shanghai et les concours Van Cliburn, Busoni et Honens. Durant l’été 2015, il a enseigné à la Fondation chinoise pour les arts, au PianoSummer. 

Institute de New Paltz (New York), à la Musikakademie in Liechtenstein et au Festival de musique d’Aspen. Au nombre des pianistes renommés auxquels il a enseigné figurent Yuja Wang, Sean Chen et Niu Niu.

Hung-Kuan Chen a participé à d’enrichissantes collaborations artistiques avec, entre autres, Christoph Eschenbach, Hans Graf, George Cleve, Joseph Silverstein, David Shifrin, Roman Totenberg, ChoLiang Lin, le Quatuor Shanghai, Sui Lan et Andrew Parrott. Son partenariat artistique le plus important est celui qu’il a avec sa femme, la pianiste Tema Blackstone, avec qui il se produit souvent en duo.

Tema Blackstone a participé, à titre de formatrice, de conférencière ou de concertiste, à des festivals de musique internationaux dont le Morningside Music Bridge, le Festival de Banff, l’Académie annuelle de piano du Conservatoire de Shanghai et le Mosaic Festival en Californie. La Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts l’a présentée en concert et l’invite chaque été à enseigner à son festival. Tema Blackstone a fait partie du jury des concours internationaux de piano Honens et Steinway, et a participé au Festival d’Aspen.

Elle est membre du corps enseignant de la division préuniversitaire de la Juilliard School à New York; le mentorat et le soutien des jeunes pianistes sont une priorité pour elle. Elle a cofondé la série de récitals Millennium 3 à Boston (1990) et le programme The Connection au conservatoire Mount Royal de Calgary, qui consacrait des fonds à des pianistes de la Chine et de l’Amérique du Nord au Canada (1999). Depuis 2012, elle est présidente de la Fondation Artemisia (Boston), qui donne à de jeunes musiciens prometteurs des occasions de se produire dans des salles prestigieuses et de participer au rayonnement de la musique dans la communauté.