Pianist Ernest Barretta has performed extensively in the U. S. and abroad as both a soloist and chamber musician. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree at Oberlin Conservatory, his Master of Music degree at the University of Arts, and his Doctor of Musical Arts at Peabody Conservatory. He had early studies in piano, organ, and composition in the Pittsburgh area, and later studies with Sanford Margolis, Jonathan Shames, and Yoheved Kaplinsky.

    He was a recipient of honors and awards at all three schools, including the Rudolf Serkin Prize (Oberlin), Strine Award (U. of A.) and Zierler Award (Peabody). His performances and interviews were broadcast on WFLN (Philadelphia) and WBJC (Baltimore).

    Recently, Dr. Barretta performed as a soloist with the St. Petersburg Symphony in Russia, the National Gallery Orchestra and the Mid-Atlantic Symphony, and presented solo recitals in New York and Washington, D. C., including an appearance at XM Radio Studios. His recordings are available on multiple labels.

    Dr. Barretta has served on the Juilliard Pre-College Piano Faculty since 2000; he is a former piano faculty member of Peabody Conservatory and Towson University (Maryland). He is also active as a conductor and composer and has served as Music Director of St. Joseph Church in Baltimore, MD since 1994.

    Pianist Hung-Kuan Chen was born in Taipai 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. 

    An adjudicator in international competitions, including the Van Cliburn Competition, Busoni Competition, Honens Competition, and International China Competition, Chen is a former faculty member of Boston University, the New England Conservatory, and the Shanghai Conservatory, and he has been a visiting professor at Yale since 2010. He holds an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory where he studied with Russell Sherman. His early studies were with Hans Leygraf in Germany at the Hannover Hochschule and with Bela Boszormenyi-Nagy. He has been on the faculty at Juilliard, both in the college and Pre-College Division, since 2014.

    Gary Graffman has been a major figure in the music world since his debut with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of eighteen. For the next three decades, he toured almost continuously, playing the most demanding works in the piano literature.

    He has numerous recordings with the orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, and Chicago under such conductors as Bernstein, Ormandy, Szell, and Mehta include concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Brahms, Chopin, and Beethoven; they are still regarded as touchstones. In 1979, however, an injury to his right hand limited Mr. Graffman's concertizing to the small body of repertoire for left hand alone. Since then seven new works have been commissioned for him, and he continues to perform. 

    Mr. Graffman's association with the Curtis Institute of Music began in 1936 when he was accepted, at the age of seven, to study with Isabelle Vengerova. He graduated in 1946. In 1980, following his performance-reducing injury, he joined the Curtis piano faculty.From 1986 through May 2006, he served as director of Curtis, as well as president from 1995 to 2006.

    Pianist Yoheved Kaplinsky was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. She was a prizewinner at the J.S. Bach International Competition in Washington, D.C. She has made numerous appearances in recitals, playing chamber music, and with orchestras, as well as on radio and television in Israel and the U.S. She has given frequent lectures and master classes throughout the U.S., Israel, and Korea.

    Festivals she has played and taught at include Bowdoin Summer Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Pianofest in Long Island, N.Y., the Cliburn-T.C.U. Institute, and Tel Hai Master Classes in Israel. She has served as an adjudicator for international competitions, including the Van Cliburn, Cleveland, Arthur Rubinstein, Dublin, and Tchaikovsky competitions. She received the Presidential Scholars Teacher Recognition Award in 2003. She was a former faculty member at Philadelphia University of the Arts, Manhattan School of Music, and Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore from 1989-97.

    Kaplinsky studied with Ilona Vincze at the Tel Aviv Music Academy. She received her bachelor, master and doctoral degrees from Juilliard, where she studied with Irwin Freundlich. She also studied with Dorothy Taubman.
Kaplinsky has been a Juilliard faculty member since 1993, chair of the piano department since 1997, and Susan W. Rose Chair since 2000. She has been a Pre-College faculty member since 1993 and artistic director of the division since 2007.

    Pianist Julian Martin joined the faculty of The Juilliard School in 1999. Prior to that appointment he held positions at Peabody Conservatory and Oberlin College-Conservatory. Launching his career in the 1970s with competitive successes in Montevideo, Cleveland, and Kapell, Martin has been heard in major halls around the world. He has appeared with conductors Sergiu Comisiona, Jose Serebrier, Richard Rodney Bennett, Amerigo Marino, Leon Fleisher, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, among many.

    In great demand as an adjudicator, Martin has served on the juries of major competitions including the Montreal, Iowa, American Pianists' Foundation, AMSA (Cincinnati), Hilton Head, Virtuosi/2000 in St. Petersburg, Virginia Waring, Valladolid and Jaen (Spain), as well as national competitions in Argentina, Colombia, Canada, Korea and the U.S. He was a member of the original selection committee for the Gilmore Foundation in Kalamazoo, and a panelist for the Kennedy Center's Music of the Americas program. He is currently on the Artistic Advisory Committee of the Orange County Chamber Music Society. In May, 2019, he will chair the jury for the upcoming Casagrande Competition in Terni, Italy.

    In 1999 Martin founded the Gijon International Piano Festival in Spain, for which he served as Artistic Director for twelve years. In 2011 he established a summer academy (VIPA) at the Valencia Conservatory, also in Spain. Now a regular faculty member of the Aspen and Bowdoin International festivals, he has also been a Guest Faculty member of the Glenn Gould Professional School (Toronto), the Conservatoire de Geneve (HEM), Tibor Varga (Switzerland), and the Banff Centre (Canada). In addition to countless master classes in the U. S. Martin has presented master classes in Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Uruguay and Venezuela.

    American pianist Robert McDonald has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, and the Far East as a renowned solo recitalist and an esteemed recital partner. He has performed with Isaac Stern, Midori, and numerous other artists and has taken the stage as soloist with the San Francisco, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Omaha, and Curtis symphony orchestras. 

    He has also appeared with the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Costa Rica and with the Orchestra Sinfonica Haydn di Bolzano e Trento in Italy. Mr. McDonald is an active chamber musician and has collaborated with the Juilliard, American, Muir, Takacs, Brentano, Fine Arts, Orlando, and Chicago quartets, as well as with Musicians from Marlboro on several of its tours.

    Mr. McDonald is on the piano faculty at The Juilliard School and gives classes during the year at the Glenn Gould Professional School of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. For the past twenty-one summers, he has been director of the keyboard program at the Taos School of Music and Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico. Other summer teachings and festival activities have taken him to the Bergen, Besangon, Lucerne, Montreux, Salzburg, Aldeburgh, and Schleswig-Holstein festivals in Europe, as well as the Marlboro, Brevard, and Caramoor festivals in the United States and the International School for Musical Arts in Canada.

    Among Mr. McDonald's numerous awards, grants, and prizes are the Gold Medal at the Busoni International Piano Competition in Italy and top prizes at both the William Kapell International Competition and the Washington International Competition. He is also the recipient of the National Federation of Music Clubs Artist Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Grant.

    Recognized as one of today's most gifted artists and enjoying an active career as both conductor and pianist, Ignat Solzhenitsyn's lyrical and poignant interpretations have won him critical acclaim throughout the world.

    Principal Guest Conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Conductor Laureate of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Ignat Solzhenitsyn is much in demand as a guest conductor, having recently led the symphonies of Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Dallas, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Nashville, Phoenix, Seattle, and Toronto, the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, the Czech National Symphony, as well as many of the major orchestras in Russia including the Mariinsky Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Moscow Philharmonic, and the Moscow Symphony. He has partnered with such world-renowned soloists as Richard Goode, Gary Graffman, Steven Isserlis, Leila Josefowicz, Sylvia McNair, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Garrick Ohlsson, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Mitsuko Uchida.

    Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s extensive touring schedule in the United States and Europe has included concerto performances with numerous major orchestras, including those of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore, Washington, Montreal, Toronto, London, Paris, Israel, and Sydney, and collaborations with such distinguished conductors as Herbert Blomstedt, James Conlon, James DePreist, Charles Dutoit, Lawrence Foster, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Maxim Shostakovich, Yuri Temirkanov and David Zinman.