Piano Faculty

 

Diane Birr - piano, collaborative pianist, (Adult Piano Seminar, JSS1)

Pianist Diane Birr has collaborated with numerous vocalists and instrumentalists in recitals and master classes throughout the United States, and in Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Scotland, Austria, England and Norway. Dr. Birr has served as an official accompanist for the Music Teachers National Association’s (MTNA) national competitions, the International Double Reed Society Conference, the International Horn Society Conference and the International Trombone Festival. She is a frequently featured as pianist on the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra Chamber Music Series in Ithaca, NY and is currently a member of the Troica trio, which in summer 2010 performed at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in Sydney, Australia, in addition to releasing its first CD entitled Troica - music for trumpet, saxophone and piano. From 1998-2004 Birr served on the faculty of International Workshops, a two-week music and arts festival held in various locations around the world performing in recitals with faculty members including string bassist Francois Rabbath and violinist Eduard Melkus, as well as coaching chamber music.

Birr holds the Doctor of Musical Arts in Accompanying and Chamber Music from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Jean Barr. Dr. Birr maintains an active role in professional music organizations and is currently serving as MTNA's Eastern Division Director and as a member of the MTNA Board of Directors. Associate Professor Birr is on the faculty of the School of Music at Ithaca College, where she teaches group and private piano, as well as coaches chamber music and instructs a piano collaborative class for keyboard majors.

 

Andrew Cooperstock - piano (YAS)

Heralded as a "technically impeccable and musically profound" pianist, Andrew Cooperstock performs widely as soloist and chamber musician and has appeared throughout six continents and in most of the fifty states, including performances at New York's Alice Tully, Merkin, and Weill concert halls, the United Nations, and in London, Beijing, Kiev, Seoul, Canberra, Lima, Geneva, and Hamburg, on National Public Radio, Radio France, and the BBC. Winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Artist Competition and the New Orleans International Piano Competition, he has since served as juror for these as well as the Music Teachers National Association National Competition and the Liszt-Garrison International Competition, among others.

With violinist William Terwilliger, as the award-winning Opus Two, he has recorded the complete works for piano and violin by Aaron Copland and performed them worldwide. He has also performed with the Takacs and Ying Quartets,Trio Contraste, the Dorian Quintet, and the Colorado Chamber Players. An advocate for new music, he has premiered works by Lowell Liebermann, Robert Starer, Dan Welcher, and John Fitz Rogers, and Opus Two's upcoming CD for Naxos, music of Leonard Bernstein, features newly commissioned arrangements by Broadway veteran Eric Stern. A graduate of the Juilliard School and the Cincinnati and Peabody Conservatories, Dr. Cooperstock studied with Abbey Simon, David Bar-Illan, Walter Hautzig, and Samuel Sanders. Currently, he is a senior member of the keyboard department at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

 

Sergio Gallo - piano (Adult Piano Seminar)

Sergio Gallo joined Georgia State University in fall 2006, having previously served as faculty at the University of North Dakota and Millikin University. Dr. Gallo received his degrees from the Conservatoire Européen de Musique in Paris (Diplôme d'Excellence), the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest, Hungary, the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (Master of Music and Artist Diploma) and the University of California (DMA). He has performed with orchestras throughout the Americas and in Turkey, as well as for Radio France and Radio Cultura. Recently, Dr. Gallo performed and taught in several countries in Asia and Europe, as well as in major cities in the United States and in his home country, Brazil. In addition, he has served as the adjudicator for the International Piano Performance Examinations in Taiwan.

Dr. Gallo is the winner of concerto competitions of the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra and the University of California Symphony. He has received a grant from the Henry Cowell Incentive Funds at the American Music Center in New York, NY, and has toured North Dakota with a Challenge America Fast-Track Review Grant award from the National Endowments for the Arts.

Sergio Gallo is a Bosendorfer artist and records for the Eroica label. His recordings have been reviewed by Gramophone Magazine and American Record Guide.

 

Larry Graham - piano ( YAS, Adult Piano Seminar)

Pianist Larry Graham’s superb performances have garnered acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.  Winner of the coveted “Prize of the Public” by overwhelming vote at the Queen Elizabeth Concours in 1975, Graham was also the top-ranked American in this, the oldest, most prestigious and grueling of all international competitions.  Le Soir of Brussels lauded Graham’s popularity as “significant and encouraging”, hailing the exceptional musicality, charm, and genuine feeling that accompanied his masterful playing.  Other international successes followed as in 1977 at the Arthur Rubinstein competition in Tel Aviv.  In 1986, he closed out his brilliant competitive career with First Prize at the McMahan international Music Competition.

Larry Graham has subsequently played over 35 different concerti in performances with orchestras both here and abroad;  There have been numerous solo engagements as well.  After hearing him, Paul Hume of the Washington Post declared that Mr. Graham “…will emerge as one of the finest of our new generation of pianists.”  His mastery of the repertoire encompasses a full range of piano works from Bach through Stravinsky.  Mr. Graham avoids both the hyper-emotional theatricality, and the “authentic” sterility that are currently in vogue.  “No formula can ever replace sincere and discerning music-making”, he comments.

In addition to his activities as a soloist, Graham has also performed extensively with chamber music ensembles along with such artists as Gil Shaham, Arnold Steinhardt, and Ransom Wilson.  He has also appeared with the Guarneri, Takacs, and Tokyo string quartets. For eleven years, Larry Graham was the pianist for the highly acclaimed Pablo Casals Trio, the only ensemble that Mr. Casals personally lent his name to.

 Larry Graham received his training at the Juilliard School in New York as scholarship student of Rosina Lhevinne and Martin Canin.  Early successes in piano competitions such as the Kosciusko, Bloch and G.B.Dealey resulted in his debut with Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1965.   In 1969  Mr. Graham won the Concert Artists auditions which led to his debut at New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall.  As a teacher, Mr. Graham has had abundant distinction, his students having competed successfully at local, state and international levels.  For 25 years he was Professor of piano at the University of Colorado and continues working with gifted pre-college students.

Larry balances his love of teaching and performing with an active outdoors life.  An avid runner, backpacker, and rock climber, he recently completed the ascent of all fifty-four 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado.  In 1984, Mr. Graham was the subject of a national PBS documentary that explored the relationship between the two very diverse disciplines that he has pursued.

 

Marina Beretta Hammond - duo-piano (JSS1)

The Hammonds made their debut as a duo in 1991 at the V Latin-American Music Festival in Caracas, Venezuela. The Hammonds have played at the IX Contemporary Music Festival in Alicante, Spain and in the Chamber Music series at the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid. They have toured Argentina repeatedly, playing in Buenos Aires, Rosario, Cordoba and Concepcion. The Duo has given many performances as recitalists and with orchestra in the United States, Venezuela, Spain and Argentina.

Fred Hammond, born in Venezuela, received his Bachelor and Master of Music from The Julliard School. He is currently teaching piano at the Young Pianists Program of the Indiana University and IUPUI Music Academy. He has played in Spain, France, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and the United States. Marina Berretta-Hammond, born in Argentina, graduated from the National Conservatory of Music and in 1992 received a Master of Music at Indiana University where she is on the adjunct faculty.

 

Nathan Hess - piano (JSS2)

Dr. Nathan Hess has appeared in concert throughout the United States and Europe in solo, chamber, and concerto settings. He has soloed with the Erie Philharmonic, Erie Chamber Orchestra, Orchard Park Symphony, Western New York Chamber Orchestra, New River Valley Symphony, York Symphony Orchestra (PA), and Ithaca College Chamber Orchestra, among others. Recent guest recital appearances and masterclasses have included Penn State University, Mansfield University, Waldorf College, and Buffalo State College. 

Hess holds the Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and the Bachelor of Music degree, summa cum laude, from James Madison University, where he was named a Presser Scholar. His major teachers have included Elizabeth Pridonoff, Eugene Pridonoff, and Eric Ruple, and he has performed in masterclasses for such luminaries as John Browning, James Tocco, and Emanuele Arciuli.

A proponent of chamber music, he has performed in chamber music settings with members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, and Buffalo Philharmonic, among others. His chamber music coaches have included Sandra Rivers, Jane Coop, Ronald Copes, Seymour Lipkin, Jan Vogler, Charles Neidich, Kenneth Griffiths, Lee Fiser, and eighth blackbird. Hess has also acted as orchestral pianist with the Erie Philharmonic and Binghamton Philharmonic.

For five years Hess chaired the piano program at the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts (PGSA) in Erie, teaching piano to some of the state's most talented pre-college students. He performed in and produced a set of recordings for the textbook Harmony in Context, published by McGraw-Hill and written by Miguel Roig-Francoli. In addition to teaching and performing, Dr. Hess is active in Music Teachers National Association and also adjudicates frequently throughout the United States. Currently he is Assistant Professor of Piano at Ithaca College and teaches in the College's Summer Piano Institute held each July. He can be heard on the Centaur label in a recording with flutist Susan Royal.

 

Eli Kalman - piano, collaborative pianist (YAS)

Pianist ELI KALMAN has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician in Romania, Israel, Germany, Hungary, United States and Canada. Hailing from Israel, he was the recipient of the Paul Collins Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellowship for Excellence at UW-Madison. He was an enthusiastic artist-in-residence at the Chamber Music Festival at Banff, Canada where he has performed for three consecutive years in the Art of the Ensemble concert series. Dr. Kalman performed at the Token Creek Festival, the Emmanuel Music-Schumann Chamber Series in Boston, and the Connoisseur Series at Wichita State University, the “Searl Pickett Classical Concert Series” at Windhover and as a part of the acclaimed Myra Hess Memorial concerts in Chicago. In 2001, he recorded on CD the works for solo piano and cello and piano by Erwin Junger and in 2006, Robert Schumann’s Sonatas for Violin and Piano with violinist Rose Mary Harbison. Other recordings of his recitals have been heard on Jerusalem Radio and for the most part on Wisconsin National Public Radio. His research interests include neglected repertoire for strings and piano and the compositions of Romanian pianist Dinu Lipatti and Israeli composer Erwin Junger. Since 2006, he serves as Professor of Piano at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and he is also on the piano faculty at the association “Maestro“, which is a non-profit organization in Israel that provides a home base for accomplished Israeli musicians living abroad. Dr. Kalman earned the Diploma in Piano Performance at the Academy of Music “G. Dima” in Cluj, Romania, the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

SoYoung Lee - piano (YAS)

SoYoung Lee, Music Director at Rocky Ridge Music Center, received her Doctorate in Musical Arts in Piano Performance from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  An award winning pianist and a Regents Scholar, she is a recipient of the Ernő Dohnányi Piano Prize, Gwendolyn Koldofsky Accompanying Fellowship and the Corwin Composition Award.  SoYoung is involved with a number of music and dance projects including Bach2Brazil and In the Mist chamber ballets in collaboration with choreographer and former Balanchine dancer Viki Psihoyos, a multi-disc recording project of Schumann with pianist Sergio Gallo and baritone Daniel Ihasz.  She has held director positions at Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory Adult Education & Preparatory Department, Millikin University Preparatory Division and the Boulder Arts Academy & Boulder Ballet.  SoYoung served on the music faculty at Millikin, State University of New York, Fredonia and was a visiting Piano Pedagogy faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  She attended the University of Birmingham and the Birmingham School of Music in England, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Santa Barbara on a full music scholarship.  SoYoung is equally at home as a performing artist, teacher, producer, and an arts advocate.