Pianist Wayman Chin has performed widely throughout the United States, Asia, and the United Kingdom. In the United States, his concerts include performances at Princeton University, the Curtis Institute of Music, Jordan Hall and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Old First Concert Series in San Francisco. In the Far East, Mr. Chin has appeared at Tsuen Wan Town Hall in Hong Kong, and in the Philippines, on the Sala Foundation concert series, at the residence of the US Ambassador in Manila and at Soochow University in Taipei.

Wayman Chin’s playing has been described as, “transcendental, long lines spun like glorious gold thread,” “ferociously concentrated, intense, focused, and musically astute” (Boston Herald), “vividly characterized and atmospheric,” (Stamford Mercury, U.K.) and “sheer magic….every note is colored.”(the Freeman, Philippines).

Devoted to chamber music playing, Mr. Chin has collaborated with artists such as the Pacifica Quartet, Cassatt String Quartet, violinists Jesse Mills and Eric Rosenblith, violist Masumi Rostad, cellists Ole Akahoshi and Thomas Kraines, sopranos Nancy Armstrong and Maria Jette and baritone Thomas Meglioranza. For twelve seasons, he was a member of the artist faculty at the Yellow Barn Music School and Festival and for six seasons performed and taught at the Stamford International Music Festival in England.

An advocate of new music, Wayman Chin has premiered many works by noted composers, including those of Scott Wheeler, Marti Epstein, Meyer Kupferman, Jeremy Van Buskirk, and Paul Brust; he has also introduced several works of Aaron Jay Kernis to Boston audiences. Of Chin’s performance of Kernis’ Valentines, David Cleary of 21st Century Music wrote, “Wayman Chin traversed the formidable challenges of the piano part with conspicuous success. His highly demonstrative performing style excellently suited the work’s forthright nature.”

A committed teacher, Wayman Chin has been a member of the faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College since 1994. At Longy, where he received the George Seaman Award for Excellence in the Art of Teaching, Chin served as Dean of the Conservatory from 2008-2020; in 2020, he was named Dean Emeritus.

Mr. Chin earned a Bachelor of Music degree with honors from the University of Hartford’s Hartt School and a Master of Music degree from Yale University. His principal teachers and mentors were Anne Koscielny, Donald Currier, Joan Panetti, and Raymond Hanson. Previously, Chin has served on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and on the Music Program Faculty of the Winter Cycle at the Banff Centre in Canada.

In recent years, Wayman Chin has performed recitals at Dickinson College, Arkansas State University, Rhode Island Chamber Music Concerts, and the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City. He has also given master classes in Taiwan (National Taichung University of Education; Soochow University); Hong Kong (Hong Kong Baptist University); the Philippines (University of Santo Tomas) and Canada (Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto). Wayman Chin has been a contributing writer to Opera News and has served on the juries of the CS Music International Piano Competition in Guangzhou, China (2018) and the Boston International Piano Competition (2017, 2019).

Praised for her “thrilling, inspirational performance” (Florida Sun-Sentinel) and “elegance of line, leaping energy” (San Jose Mercury News), pianist Yukiko Sekino has forged a career that encompasses a wide range of interests. A soloist noted for her performances of Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin, she frequently collaborates in chamber music and performs some of the most challenging twentieth and twenty-first century works.

Sekino is the Gold Medalist of the 2006 International Russian Music Piano Competition and a 2010 winner of the S&R Foundation’s Washington Award. As the winner of the Mu Phi Epsilon International Competition, she has toured within the United States in recitals, masterclasses, and concerto performances. Additional honors include Tanglewood Music Center’s Jackson Prize and the JAA Music Award in New York. She made a concerto debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at age sixteen, and has since performed with the New World Symphony, Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, and Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra. Recent recitals include those at Jordan Hall in Boston, Overtures Series in Washington, D.C., Dame Myra Hess Concerts in Chicago, Hitomi Memorial Hall in Tokyo, Japan, and Northeast Asia International Piano Festival in China.

An avid collaborative artist and a new music performer, Sekino was the pianist of the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas from 2005 to 2008.

Sekino is a graduate of Harvard University and the Juilliard School. Her teachers include Gilbert Kalish, Seymour Lipkin, Robert Levin, and Eda Shlyam. Currently based in Boston, she teaches piano at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the New England Conservatory Prep School. She has given masterclasses in the United States and China, and has served as a summer guest artist and faculty at East Carolina Piano Festival and Atlantic Music Festival.

www.yukikosekino.com

Michael Lewin, jury chair, is one of America’s most foremost concert pianists, winning over audiences in 30 countries with playing of “majestic power and searing emotion.” (The London Times). His career was launched with top prizes in the Franz Liszt International Competition, the American Pianists Association Award and the William Kapell International Piano Competition. His recordings have won a Grammy Award and a Roundglass Music Award.

He has appeared as orchestral soloist with the Netherlands Philharmonic, Cairo Symphony, China National Radio Orchestra, Bucharest Philharmonic, Youth Orchestra of the Americas, State Symphony of Greece, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Phoenix, Indianapolis, Miami, North Carolina, West Virginia, Nevada, New Orleans, Colorado, Guadalajara, and Puerto Rico Symphonies. Solo appearances include New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Taiwan’s National Concert Hall, Hong Kong’s City Hall Theatre, Holland’s Muziekcentrum, Moscow’s Great Hall, the Athens Megaron, the National Gallery of Art, the Newport, Ravinia and Spoleto Festivals and PBS Television. His extensive repertoire includes over 40 piano concertos, with particular interest in the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy and American and Latin American composers.

Mr. Lewin’s award-winning discography on Sono Luminus, Naxos and Centaur includes a pair of acclaimed Debussy recordings entitled “Beau Soir” and “Starry Night”, the complete piano music of Charles T. Griffes, Scarlatti Sonatas Vol. 2 for Naxos, “Michael Lewin plays Liszt,” “A Russian Piano Recital”, “Bamboula!” piano music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, “Piano Phantoms,” “If I Were a Bird” and the 4 Violin Sonatas by William Bolcom with Irina Muresanu.

Michael Lewin is Professor and Head of Piano at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Classical Music Director for Ethos Music in China. He gives master classes worldwide, directs the Boston Conservatory Piano Masters Series and has mentored many prize-winning pianists. He is a Juilliard School graduate and a Steinway Artist. His own teachers includedLeon Fleisher, Yvonne Lefebure, Adele Marcus and Irwin Freundlich.
www.michaellewin.com

Born in Heraklion, Crete, Greece, Konstantinos Papadakis has been described by the press as “one of the greatest hopes of music” as well as a “spontaneous, honest artist.” The Boston Globe wrote: "Papadakis gave a stunning performance displaying great variety of attack, poetic lyricism, and wrists of carbon steel.”

Konstantinos has performed in recitals and collaborated with chamber ensembles and orchestras in the world’s major concert halls and famous artistic centers from Russia and Southern Europe to the United States and Canada. He has recorded several works especially written for him by contemporary composers, many of which have been broadcast on radio and television.

He has won several prizes and distinctions at international piano competitions, including the prestigious Yannis Vardinoyannis Award, given for the first time to a pianist, as well as the Esther & Albert Kahn Award. Other major appearances include Wigmore Hall, Jordan Hall, the Athens Concert Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall and St. Petersburg’s Grand Concert Hall, where he performed in world premieres of works by Greek and Russian contemporary composers.

Equally at home performing Bach’s English Suites or Ligeti’s Etudes for Piano, he possesses an unusually broad repertoire, including some 70 concertos, over 300 works for solo piano, and numerous chamber works. In 2008-2009 Konstantinos finished recording Theodore Antoniou’s complete piano works, and selected sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. Commemorating the bicentennial year of Franz Liszt's birth, in 2011 Konstantinos embarked on an ambitious cycle of recitals of some of Liszt's shorter and less known works. In the spring of 2011, he recorded a new and unique CD of 16 miniature Liszt masterpieces entitled "The Short Liszt".

Konstantinos studied at the Hellenic Conservatory of Crete with Vilma Antonakaki; a year later, having already won the first prize at the Panhellenic Competition (including a Special Distinction for his own composition), he debuted as soloist in many performances showing his special musical and pianistic skills. He subsequently received a fellowship at the Hellenic Conservatory of Athens, where he studied with Costis Gaetanos, and he graduated with a First Prize Golden Medal for excellence (a superior distinction awarded for the first time to a pianist). He continued his studies in London with Martino Tirimo and Vladimir Ashkenazy and Moscow with NikolaiPetrov.

An alumnus of Boston University's School for the Arts, Konstantinos studied with Anthony di Bonaventura and received an Artist’s Diploma in Piano Performance. At his graduation in May of 2000, he was honored with the Esther & Albert Kahn Award and was invited to join Boston University's piano faculty where he remained until 2019. From 2006 to May 2011 Konstantinos was the “Samuel Barber Artist-in-Residence” at West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

In addition to repeated solo appearances with Boston's Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, Konstantinos holds the prestigious Motoko and Gordon Deane Principal Chair as the Orchestra's pianist.

Currently he is on the piano faculties of the New England Conservatory's Pre-College and Continuing Education Division and Belmont Piano Academy. He also directs the Summer Piano Academy in Archanes, Greece (www.archanesmusic.org).

www.kpapadakis.com