Art of 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 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.

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 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.