2026 FACULTY
PAUL SCHENLY
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Winner of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, pianist Paul Schenly has been a soloist with major United States orchestras, including the Atlanta Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and New York Philharmonic. He made two United States tours with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and toured with the same orchestra in Europe. He has appeared in many summer festivals, including repeated performances at the Hollywood Bowl, the Ravinia Festival, Blossom Music Center and the Mostly Mozart Festival.
Mr. Schenly appeared in the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center, the Royal Concertgebouw, Royal Albert Hall and in acclaimed recitals at Carnegie Hall. He has performed with many of the world's leading conductors including Cristoph Eschenbach, James Levine, Erich Leinsdorf, Christoph von Dohnányi, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Edo de Waart, Mstislav Rostropovich, Robert Shaw and Aaron Copland, Michael Tilson Thomas and Kiril Kondrashin.
Born in Munich, Mr. Schenly lived in South America before coming to the U.S. at age five. He earned a Master of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Victor Babin. He later served on the faculty and was the chairman of the piano department at the Cleveland Institute for over 25 years.
Mr. Schenly has served on the juries of several national and international competitions and his students have won many national and international prizes. He has served on the jury of the Beethoven Competition in Bonn and Mozart Competition in Salzburg. He is also on the advisory board of the American Pianists Foundation and on the nominating committee for the Gilmore Piano Foundation. He has recorded for Sine Qua Non and RCA.
Mr. Schenly is Artistic Advisor of the Cleveland International Piano Competition and is the Founder/Director of Pianofest in the Hamptons. He is also Artist in Residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
His website address, including video of his performances and information about Pianofest in the Hamptons is at paulschenly.com.
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“His performance brought a veritable roar of approval from the audience,” wrote the Irish Times, after Pavel Nersessian received the 1st Prize in the GPA Dublin International Piano Competition in 1991. Being one of the most remarkable pianists of his generation in Russia, he is known for his ability to play equally convincingly in the whole palette of the piano repertoire. He won prizes in the Beethoven Competition in Vienna in 1985, the Paloma O’Shea Competition in Santander, and the Tokyo Competition.
Nersessian was a pupil of the famous Central Music School of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, where his teacher was Yu. Levin. Later he was a student of the Conservatoire under Prof. S. Dorensky. Upon graduating from the Conservatoire in 1987 with maximum marks he was invited to join the faculty.
Pavel Nersessian has been touring Russia and surrounding states from the age of eight, and has given performances in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Cannes, Leipzig, Vienna, Budapest, Madrid, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Dublin, Muenchen, Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, Belgrade, Cairo, Kiev, and many other cities.
Mr. Nersessian, by special invitation from the Kirov and the Perm Ballet, performed solo part in Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial based on the music of Tchaikovsky’s 2nd Piano Concerto with performances in the Kirov, Bolshoi, Chatelet and Covent Garden. He also played a solo part in J. Robbins’ ballet “The concert, or The Perils of Everybody” on the music of F. Chopin.
He is known for his collaboration with chamber music groups and other musicians, such as Borodin and Glinka Quartets, National Symphony Orchestra in Russia, Thomas Sanderling, Tugan Sokhiev, Eri Klas, Saulius Sondeckis, Alexander Lazarev, Ken-David Mazur, Pavel Kogan, Alexandre Chernushenko, Mikhail Agrest, Pascal Moragues, Julius Milkis, Evgeny Petrov, Abel Perreira, Benjamin Schmid, Stepan Yakovich, Ani Kavafian, Andrei Gridchuk, Alena Baeva, Philippe Cassard, Yana Ivanilova, Nina Kogan, Mikhail Bereznitsky and many others. He has recorded numerous disks with the compositions of Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Shostakovich, and he has given masterclasses in the USA, Russia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Korea, Brazil, and Japan.
For more than 30 years P. Nersessian assisted his teacher, professor S. Dorensky. He has worked with such talented pupils as N. Lugansky, D. Matsuev, V. Rudenko, O. Kern, A. Shtarkman, Yu. Stadler, I. Tasovats, F. Amirov, M. Amara, A. Dossin, V. Igoshina, A. Mamriev, V. Korchinskaya-Kogan, S. Simonian, Z. Chochieva, G. Chaidze, N. Pisareva, A. Sychev, F. Kopachevsky, P. Kolesnikov, A. Tarasevich-Nikolaev, L. Bernsdorf, P. Elisha, Alexander Kliuchko, Alexander Malofeev, and many others.
In 2005 he became a merited artist of the Russian Federation. He has taught at Boston University since 2013 and at New England Conservatory since 2022, and still maintains his studio at Moscow Conservatory. Learn more at pavelnersessian.com.
PAVEL NERSESSIAN
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Ursula Oppens, a legend among American pianists, is widely admired particularly for her original and perceptive readings of new music, but also for her knowing interpretations of the standard repertoire. No other artist alive today has commissioned and premiered more new works for the piano that have entered the permanent repertoire.
A prolific and critically acclaimed recording artist with five Grammy nominations, Ms. Oppens most recently released a new recording of Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated, nominated for a Grammy in 2016, and Piano Songs, a collaboration with Meredith Monk. To be released in 2021 with Cedille Records, Ms. Oppens has recorded a CD of solo, chamber, and orchestral works by Laura Kaminsky. Earlier Grammy nominations were for Winging It: Piano Music of John Corigliano; Oppens Plays Carter; a recording of the complete piano works of Elliott Carter for Cedille Records (also was named a “Best of the Year” selection by The New York Times long-time music critic Allan Kozinn); Piano Music of Our Time featuring compositions by John Adams, Elliott Carter, Julius Hemphill, and Conlon Nancarrow for the Music and Arts label, and her cult classic The People United Will Never Be Defeated by Frederic Rzewski on Vanguard. Ms. Oppens recently added to her extensive discography by releasing a two-piano CD for Cedille Records devoted to Visions de l’Amen of Oliver Messiaen and Debussy’s En blanc et noir performed with pianist Jerome Lowenthal.
On February 2, 2019, Ms. Oppens performed a recital at Merkin Concert Hall for a celebration of her 75th birthday, inaugurating the Kaufman Music Center’s newest series, Only at Merkin with Terrance McKnight. Her program showcased all works written for her by Elliott Carter and John Corigliano, and gave the world premiere of a piano quintet by Laura Kaminsky—commissioned by the pianist for the occasion with production support from the Newburgh Institute for The Arts & Ideas—alongside the Cassatt String Quartet and Tobias Picker’s Ursula for solo piano, a birthday present for his dear friend and collaborator.
Of Ms. Oppens’ Merkin Hall concert, David Wright of New York Classical Review wrote on February 3, 2019:
Merkin Concert Hall was packed Saturday night…for a celebration of the pianist’s 75th birthday on its exact date. Here one was especially aware of the quality of Oppens’ tone—full and projected even in the softed pianissimo, and capable of producing tremendous impact in forte chords without sounding pinched or banged. Her pedaling was unusually subtle for new-music interpretation, managing resonances and overlapping tones like an expert Chopin player.
Over the years, Ms. Oppens has premiered works by such leading composers as John Adams, Luciano Berio, William Bolcom, Anthony Braxton, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, Anthony Davis, John Harbison, Julius Hemphill, Laura Kaminsky, Tania Leon, György Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Harold Meltzer, Meredith Monk, Conlon Nancarrow, Tobias Picker, Bernard Rands, Frederic Rzewski, Allen Shawn, Alvin Singleton, Joan Tower, Lois V Vierk, Amy Williams, Christian Wolff, Amnon Wolman, and Charles Wuorinen.
As an orchestral guest soloist, Ms. Oppens has performed with virtually all of the world’s major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), and the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Milwaukee. Abroad, she has appeared with such ensembles as the Berlin Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the
Deutsche Symphonie, the Scottish BBC, and the London Philharmonic Orchestras. Ms. Oppens is also an avid chamber musician and has performed with the Arditti, Cassatt, JACK, Juilliard, and Pacifica quartets, among other chamber ensembles.
Ursula Oppens is a Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City; she also joined the faculty of Mannes College, The New School, in fall 2017. In 2019, Ms. Oppens was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New England Conservatory. From 1994 through the end of the 2007-08 academic year she served as John Evans Distinguished Professor of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. In addition, Ms. Oppens has served as a juror for many international competitions, such as the Bachauer, Busoni, Concert Artists Guild, Young Concert Artists, Young Pianists Foundation (Amsterdam), and Cincinnati Piano World Competition. Ms. Oppens lives in New York City.
URSULA OPPENS
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Born in 1932, Jerome Lowenthal continues to fascinate audiences, who find in his playing a combination of youthful intensity and eloquence born of life-experience. He is a virtuoso of the fingers and emotions.
Mr. Lowenthal studied in his native Philadelphia with Olga Samaroff-Stokowski, in New York with William Kapell and Edward Steuermann, and in Paris with Alfred Cortot, meanwhile traveling annually to Los Angeles for coachings with Artur Rubinstein. After winning prizes in three international competitions (Bolzano, Darmstadt, and Brussels), he moved to Jerusalem where he played, taught, and lectured for three years.
Returning to America, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic playing Bartok’s Second Piano Concerto in 1963. Since then, he has performed virtually everywhere, from the Aleutians to Zagreb. He has appeared as soloist with celebrated conductors including Barenboim, Ozawa, Tilson Thomas, Temirkanov, and Slatkin, and with such giants of the past as Bernstein, Ormandy, Monteux, and Stokowski. Mr. Lowenthal has played sonatas with Itzhak Perlman; piano duos with Ronit Amir (his late wife), Carmel Lowenthal (his daughter), and Ursula Oppens; and quintets with the Lark, Avalon, and Brentano Quartets. He recently recorded Two-Piano Music of Messiaen and Debussy with Oppens and the complete Ann Es De P Lerinage of Liszt in a 3 CD set released in November 2010. Other recordings include concertos by Tchaikovsky and Liszt, solo works by Sinding and Bartók, and chamber music by Arensky and Taneyev.
Teaching is an important part of Mr. Lowenthal’s musical life, including faculty positions at The Juilliard School since 1991 and an extraordinary 50 years of teaching at the Music Academy of the West. Mr. Lowenthal has worked with an extraordinary number of gifted pianists, whom he encourages to understand the music they play in a wide aesthetic and cultural perspective — and to project it with the freedom which that perspective allows.
JEROME LOWENTHAL
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The 2019 Innovation Award Winner from the Music Academy of The West, Konstantin Soukhovetski, is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator with a thriving international career. Newly appointed Director of Education and Community Engagement at Grand Piano Series in Naples, FL, Konstantin is also a Director of Pedagogy and Narrative Musicianship at Bronx School For Music, adjunct faculty at his alma mater, The Juilliard School. He served as the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at Pianofest In The Hamptons for over 15 seasons. Recently, Konstantin guest-lectured at Curtis Institute of Music, Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, Singapore’s Academy of Music, and Jelgavas Mūsikas Vidusskolas (Latvia). Konstantin often serves on the jury of international piano competitions, currently on the 2024 Cleveland International Piano Competition selection jury.
This season, Konstantin’s performances have taken him on the Absolute Classics tour of the UK, the Batura Festival in St. Sebastian and Canary Islands (Spain), PianoFête Festival in Vashon, WA, Odyssiad Festival in Fort Collins, CO, International Composers Symposium in Del Mar, CA, and ProtoStar’s Innovative Series in La Jolla, CA, to name a few. Konstantin’s recent orchestra appearances include Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra and Pegasus: The Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.
As a composer, Konstantin’s The Pride Suite for piano is seeing its world premiers this season, and GCTYO Philharmonic Orchestra will premiere his first symphony.
As a librettist, Konstantin collaborates with composer Polina Nazaykinskaya. Their first opera, Her New Home, premiered in 2023 at Garth Newel Music Center, and their second commission for Mississippi Opera will premiere in the 2025/26 season.
Konstantin is a recipient of over 16 awards from leading international piano competitions and the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship For New Americans. Born in Moscow to a family of artists, he studied at the Moscow Central Special Music School, where he double-majored in piano and composition.