Art of Piano

Hung-Kuan Chen was born in Taipei and raised in Germany. His early studies fostered strong roots in Germanic Classicism tempered with the sensibility of Chinese philosophy. The winner of the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition and Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the recipient of an Avery Fisher Grant, Chen has collaborated with conductors including Christoph Eschenbach and Hans Graf, and his colleagues include the Tokyo and Shanghai string quartets, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinists Cho-Liang Lin and Roman Totenberg, clarinetist David Shifrin, and pianist Tema Blackstone.
 

Tema Blackstone’s rich and varied life in music has grown out of her career as a pianist. Her influential work encompasses advocacy of music and musicians as a force for personal and societal well-being, and the passing on of the legacy of great music to new generations. She is currently on the faculty of The Juilliard’s Pre-College division in New York. As a public speaker, Ms. Blackstone raises awareness of the positive effects of the arts on society, describing how music and medicine reflect and enhance one another. She champions this cause as musician and lecturer wherever she travels, from Boston, New York, Calgary and Toronto to France, Switzerland and China. Her impressive concert career encompasses solo engagements as well as piano duo performances with Hung-Kuan Chen, to whom she is married. The couple often teaches as a team and has performed worldwide.

“A performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), pianist Marc-André Hamelin is known worldwide for his unrivaled blend of consummate musicianship and brilliant technique in the great works of the established repertoire, as well as for his intrepid exploration of the rarities of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. He regularly performs around the globe with the leading orchestras and conductors of our time, and gives recitals at major concert venues and festivals worldwide.

Highlights of Mr. Hamelin’s 2023–2024 season include a vast variety of repertoire performed with the Philharmonisches Orchester Hagen (Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3), Netherlands Radio Philharmonic (Reger’s Piano Concerto), and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (music by Franck and Boulanger). Recital and chamber music appearances take Mr. Hamelin to Prague, Poland, Oslo, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, London’s Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, Portland Piano International, Cleveland Chamber Music Society, Cliburn Concerts and Brevard Music Center with Johannes Moser, and across the U.S. with the Takács Quartet. Festival appearances include Tanglewood, Le Festival de Lanaudière, Grand Teton Music Festival, Tuckamore Festival, Schubertiade, and Rockport Chamber Music Festival.

Mr. Hamelin is an exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, where his discography spans more than 70 albums, with notable recordings of a broad range of solo, orchestral, and chamber repertoire. In September 2023, the label releases Mr. Hamelin’s recording of Fauré’s Nocturnes and Barcarolles, including a short four-hand suite, played with his wife, Cathy Fuller. In 2022, he released both a two-disc set of C. P. E. Bach’s sonatas and rondos and a two-disc set of William Bolcom’s complete rags that both received wide critical acclaim.

Mr. Hamelin has composed music throughout his career, with over 30 compositions to his name. The majority of those works—including the Etudes and Toccata on “L’homme armé,” commissioned by the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—are published by Edition Peters. Mr. Hamelin performed his Toccata on “L’homme armé” along with music by C.P.E. Bach and William Bolcom on NPR’s Tiny Desk in 2023. His most recent work, his Piano Quintet, was premiered in August 2022 by himself and the celebrated Dover Quartet at La Jolla Music Society.

Mr. Hamelin makes his home in the Boston area with his wife, Cathy Fuller, a producer and host at Classical WCRB. Born in Montreal, he is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Record Critics’ Association, and has received 7 Juno Awards, 11 Grammy nominations, and the 2018 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. In December 2020, he was awarded the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Keyboard Artistry from the Ontario Arts Foundation. Mr. Hamelin is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Québec, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada.
 

Joanna MacGregor CBE is one of the world’s most innovative musicians, appearing as a concert pianist, curator and conductor. Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and Professor of University of London, Joanna MacGregor was the Artistic Director of Dartington International Summer School & Festival 2014-2019, Artistic Director of the Bath International Music Festival 2006-2012, and curated the multi-arts Deloitte Ignite Festival at the Royal Opera House, as well as Aventures+, an orchestral series for Luxembourg Philharmonie. She runs an annual Summer Piano Festival at the Royal Academy, involving over a hundred young musicians playing core repertoire as well as collaborating with composers, actors, visual artists, writers and filmmakers. Joanna has just been appointed Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Brighton Philharmonic, as it approaches its centenary.

Megumi Masaki is a pianist, multimedia performing artist, educator and curator. She is recognized as an innovator that reimagines the piano, pianist and performance space. Her work pushes boundaries of interactivity between sound, image, text and movement in multimedia works through new technologies, including hand-gesture-motion tracking to generate and control live-electronics and live-video, AI, 3D visuals, keyboard-controlled computer game, e-textile sensors and active infra-red tracking. As a Japanese-Canadian artist, her work also explores how human rights and environmental issues can intersect and be communicated through music. Over 70 compositions have been created with/for Megumi and she has premiered 150 works worldwide. Megumi was appointed to the Order of Manitoba and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
www.megumimasaki.com