Tema Blackstone, photo by Linda Li Photography. Eric Le Sage, photo by Nicolas Gueri.
Two world-class pianists—one French, one American—join participants from the Art of Piano program for a concert blending traditional and contemporary repertoire.
Tema Blackstone’s influential work involves an impressive concert career encompassing both solo and duo performances. She also advocates for music as a force for personal and societal well-being. A faculty member at Juilliard, she believes in passing on great music to new generations. She’ll be joined by faculty member Éric Le Sage.
Le Sage is internationally established as a representative of the French piano school. He has performed as a soloist with groups, including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, LA Phil, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, as well as at Carnegie Hall and the Philharmonie de Paris. He released two magnificent albums in 2022: an orchestral Mozart record under the baton of his longtime stage partner François Leleux, and a solo album featuring rare French repertoire from the beginning of the 20th century.
We’re lucky to have both Blackstone and Le Sage on faculty for the two-week Art of Piano residency, which offers professional pianists and pianist-composers the chance to work with celebrated artists. Participants advance their craft through individual coaching, masterclasses, and performance opportunities.
Art of Piano is generously supported by lead donor Heather Edwards.
Additional support provided by the Alice and Betty Schultz Scholarships Endowment Fund for Dance and Music, Helen Graham, and the Yolanda Freeze Master Artists Music Fund.
About Tema Blackstone & Éric Le Sage
Tema Blackstone
Tema Blackstone is a dedicated pedagogue, performer, and arts leader. As a faculty of The Juilliard Pre-College Division and President of the Artemisia Foundation NYC, she teaches and lectures in a wide range of settings. At the core of Blackstone’s pedagogy comes from her unique perspective emerging from a strong background in ballet, voice and theatre. She believes interdisciplinary experiences create holistic artists.
Blackstone has presented master classes and lectures at Yale, the International Piano Festival in Shanghai, the Association of Professional Music Teachers in North America, and in summer festivals such as Vivace, Banff, MMB, Chinese Foundation and Aspen. Blackstone has served as an adjudicator for major competitions such as the Honens, Young Concert Artists, Shanghai International, and Steinway among others. She is a former faculty member at NEC and Shanghai guest professor. Her students include, Yuja Wang, Niu Niu, Maxim Lando, and Wilson Liu.
As President of the Artemisia Foundation, Blackstone has produced 85 performances and masterclasses nurturing young talented pianists. Artemisia's mission is to expose young artists to new experiences from a wide variety of mentors ranging from artists to business leaders. Through Juilliard, Yale and the International piano festival in Shanghai, she has been instrumental in securing hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial and grant support for emerging artists while establishing significant institutional partnerships such as the acquisition of the first Fazioli concert grand in Canada. In 2022 she and Heather Edwards collaborated with the Banff Centre to re-invigorate the piano program, where she teaches and performs each summer.
Blackstone maintains an active performing career, with recent duo and solo appearances in major venues including Shanghai Concert Hall, Jordan Hall, Carnegie Hall, Roy Thompson Hall, Barbican, Suntory, Taipei Performing Arts Centre and others with her husband, Hung-Kuan Chen. She has also collaborated with artists such as Janos Starker, Jon Kimura Parker, and Menahem Pressler & Denes Zsigmondy & numerous chamber ensembles worldwide.
Blackstone received her ARCT, Bachelors, Master's, and DMA under the tutelage of pedagogues such as Anthony Di Bonaventura, Russell Sherman, & Hung-Kuan Chen. She is a Steinway artist.
Image by Linda Li
Eric Le Sage
Eric Le Sage is established as a famous representative of the French piano school, regularly boasted for his very subtle sound, his real sense of structure and poetic phrasing. Already when he was 20 years old, the Financial Times had described him as “an extremely cultivated disciple of the great French tradition of Schumann piano”. In 2010, die Zeit, praised his “ideal French piano aesthetics and clarity”.
Eric is invited to perform as a soloist with orchestras at the highest level such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Saint-Louis Symphony Orchestra, Berlin’s Konzerthaus Orchester, SWR Symphony Orchestra, Bremer Philharmoniker, Dresden Philharmonie, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Göteborg Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra, Münchner Kammer Orchester, Dresdner Philharmonie, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Métropolitain, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with conductors like Edo de Waart, Stéphane Denève, Pablo Gonzalez, Fabien Gabel, Sir Jeffrey Tate, François Leleux, Alexander Liebreich, Kazuki Yamada, Alondra de la Parra, Lionel Bringuier, François Leleux, Michael Stern, Leonardo Garcia Alarcon, Sir Simon Rattle and Yannick Nézet-Seguin.
Eric has performed recitals and chamber music concerts in major venues across the world such as Wigmore Hall, Suntory Hall, Carnegie Hall, Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle, Paris Philharmonie, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Radio France, Cologne Philharmonie, Essen Philharmonie, Dresden Philharmonie, Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Schwartzenberg’s Schubertiade, Salzburg Mozarteum, Ludwigsburg Festival, Prague’s Rudolfinium, Taipei National Concert Hall, Konzerthaus Vienna, Luxembourg Philharmonie, Dublin’s celebrity series, Edinburgh International Festival, Düsseldorf Tonhalle, la Roque d’Anthéron Festival, Potsdam Sanssouci, Brussels’ Bozar, Berlin’s Boulezsaal, Konzerthaus Berlin, Berlin Philharmonie.
Eric Le Sage released many albums, all of which were critically acclaimed and received multiple awards. Besides his world-famous Schumann cycle in 2010 that were awarded the very prestigious Jahrespreis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, other milestones include Francis Poulenc's complete chamber works with piano (BMG, 1998), Fauré¹s complete works for chamber music with piano, and Brahms complete chamber music works (B-Records, 2021).
Two magnificent albums were released in 2022: A Mozart album under the baton of his longtime stage partner François Leleux and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra on Alpha (concertos n° 17&24) and a solo album on Sony Classical featuring rare French repertoire from the beginning of the 20th century. In the last few years Eric released Fauré’s complete Nocturnes on Alpha (2019) and Beethoven's last 3 Sonatas (2014). Other recent chamber music recordings include collaborations with such artists as tenor Julian Pregardien for a Schumann album (2019) or Emmanuel Pahud, Paul Meyer, Daishin Kashimoto, Aurélien Pascal and more for albums around repertoire from Vienna in the 1900s, and works by Nino Rota.
A true chamber music lover, Eric regularly plays with friends like Emmanuel Pahud, Paul Meyer, Quatuor Ebène, François Leleux, Jean-Guihen Queyras, les Vents Français, François Salque, Lise Berthaud, Daishin Kashimoto, Claudio Bohorquez, Julian Prégardien, Sandrine Piau, Olivier Latry and many other musicians.
Born in Aix en Provence, Eric Le Sage was the winner of major international competitions such as Porto in 1985 and the Robert Schumann competition in Zwickau, in 1989. He was also a prize-winner at Leeds International competition the same year, which allowed him to perform under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. Eric Le Sage is Professor at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany.