French-born, Polish-raised star pianist Dr. Graciella Kowalczyk has appeared in concerts and recitals as a soloist in over fifteen countries. From early appearances personally connected to Chopin at his birthplace, Żelazowa Wola, her performances include the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, Poland; Sergei Rachmaninov Concert Hall in Moscow, Russia; Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria; Bellini Conservatory in Palermo, Italy; Kölner Philharmonic in Köln, Germany; Ed Landreth Auditorium in Fort Worth, TX and further across North and South America and Asia. Her students continue to win prizes and accolades across the United States.

She has won top prizes in many competitions all over the world, and was the recipient of awards from the Louis-Spohr Forderverein, Germany; Internationale Stiftung fur Music, Switzerland; Lili Kraus Scholarship, Fort Worth, TX, and Mu Phi Epsilon, International Music Fraternity, Kansas City, MO; Kansas City Musical Club, Kansas City, MO., and received her doctorate in piano performance from the University of Kansas.

Dr. Kowalczyk has studied with many of the greatest pianists and musicians of our time including D.Bashkirov, R.Buchbinder, S.Dorenski, J.Feghali, R.Goode, S.Ioudenitch, N.Lugansky, H.Martina, D.Mirska, W.Nabore, P.Nersessian, J.Owings, A.Pisarev, J.Perry, E.Pridonoff, Z.Zohar, and J.Winerock.

Recent highlights include cooperation with modern composers including an award-winning recording of fugues and postludes by Canadian-Armenian composer Ashot Ariyan available on the RMN Classical label. She is also the Director of the exclusive Autumn Artist Interactive, an intensive Nashville-area crossover camp for pop and country artists with vocal superstar coach Brett Manning and legendary guitarist Mario DaSilva.

In addition to her roles as President of the Board and Artistic Director of the Nashville International Chopin Piano Competition, jury chairman of the NICPC, and Director of Music City Chopin, she maintains a very active performance schedule as soloist, including numerous upcoming engagements in Europe, South America, and Asia with orchestra. Graciella is also the Artistic Director of the Chopin in Cyprus International Music Festival featuring some of the greatest Chopin interpreters of our time.

In her spare time, Graciella volunteers in her community by giving free piano lessons and helping students thrive.

Sergei Babayan has long been venerated as a “pianist’s pianist” whose interpretations combine “quiet beauty and emotional fire” (The Times of London). Celebrated for his solo recitals, chamber concerts, and concerto collaborations with orchestras around the globe, the Armenian American pianist is also one of today’s preeminent pedagogues and an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist with a growing and distinguished discography. Bachtrack calls him “one of the greatest pianists of our time.” “This is piano playing of the very highest echelon,” agrees MusicWeb International. As Canada’s Le Devoir concludes, “Babayan is a genius. Period.”

Over the coming season, Babayan performs Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto with Naples’s Orchestra del Teatro di San Carlo and the same composer’s Third with orchestras including Belgium’s Antwerp Symphony, led by its Chief Conductor, Elim Chan; Maryland’s National Philharmonic at Strathmore; and France’s Orchestre symphonique de l’Opéra de Toulon and Orchestre symphonique de Tours. Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto is similarly prominent in Babayan’s 2024-25 programming, taking him to Poland for performances with the Baltic Philharmonic, Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic, and NFM Wrocław Philharmonic, with which he reprises the work in Dresden. Other upcoming orchestral collaborations include Ravel concertos with Italy’s Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, to celebrate the French composer’s 150th anniversary; Mozart’s “Jeunehomme” with Lithuania’s Kremerata Baltica, both at the ensemble’s Vilnius home and on a tour of Italy; and a concerto for two pianos at Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, where Babayan will be joined by his former student and frequent piano partner Daniil Trifonov with the Verbier Festival Orchestra under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach.

Also in the 2024-25 season, Babayan debuts “Songs,” an imaginatively curated solo recital program exploring the evolution of lieder, folksong, and the art of melody. Combining solo pieces with piano transcriptions of songs by composers from Schubert, Schumann, and Rachmaninoff to Harold Arlen, Charles Trenet, and Armenian folk hero Komitas, this takes him from New Orleans to the Verbier Festival by way of London, Freiburg, Madrid, Málaga, and multiple locations in Italy. He performs Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Konzerthaus Dortmund; joins violinist Mihaela Martin and cellist Truls Mørk for piano trios at Germany’s Kronberg Academy; and partners with violinist Emmanuel Tjeknavorian for sonatas by Mozart, Prokofiev, and Janàček at Italy’s Auditorium di Milano.

Acclaimed in concert for his “consummate technique and insight” (New York Times), Babayan has worked with such revered conductors as Thomas Dausgaard, Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, Sir Antonio Pappano, Rafael Payare, David Robertson, Dima Slobodeniouk, Tugan Sokhiev, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Yuri Temirkanov, Xian Zhang, and Nikolaj Znaider, collaborating with some of the foremost orchestras worldwide. These include the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Czech State Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Mariinsky Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Orchestre national de Lille, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Bangkok Symphony, São Paulo Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestra, with which he has appeared at the BBC Proms.

Babayan has undertaken artistic residencies with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and at the Konzerthaus Dortmund, where, as Curating Artist in 2019, he presented a festival featuring some of his closest musical associates: Martha Argerich, Sergey Khachatryan, Mischa Maisky, and Daniil Trifonov among them. He regularly performs at many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Brooklyn Academy of Music; London’s Barbican, Royal Albert, and Wigmore Halls; and the Théâtre des Champs- Elyseés and Maison de la Radio in Paris, as well as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Berlin Konzerthaus, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Munich’s Prinzregententheater, Dortmund’s Konzerthaus, Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Zurich Tonhalle, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Sought after by summer festivals on both sides of the Atlantic, he appears at the United States’ Aspen Music Festival, Bravo! Vail, and International Keyboard Odyssiad & Festival; Canada’s Vancouver Piano Sessions; London’s BBC Proms; France’s Piano aux Jacobins and Festival International de Piano de la Roque d’Anthéron; Switzerland’s Gstaad Menuhin and Verbier Festivals; and Austria’s Salzburg Festival. His chamber music partners include the Borodin Quartet, violinist Ivry Gitlis, and fellow pianists Argerich and Trifonov. “The firepower they achieved together is rare among piano duos,” writes the New York Times of his Trifonov partnership, while The Guardian considers his Argerich collaborations “sheer delight.”

As an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2018, Babayan has made three recordings for the label. Recorded with Argerich, Prokofiev for Two (2018) captures his own two-piano transcriptions, prompting MusicWeb International to marvel: “World-class playing by both performers and the Babayan transcriptions are destined to be taken up by other pianists and incorporated into the mainstream repertoire.” His solo collection, Rachmaninoff (2020), was chosen as BBC Music magazine’s “Recording of the Month” and designated a “Choc- Classica” by France’s Classica magazine, which pronounced the album “one big masterpiece.” Most recently, Rachmaninoff for Two (2024) was recorded with Trifonov to mark the composer’s 150th anniversary. Naming it among the “Best Classical Music Albums of 2024 (So Far),” BBC Music hailed the collection as “a winning mix of limitless pianism, deep knowledge and visionary boldness.” Earlier in his career, Babayan recorded for Connoisseur Society, Discover Records, and Pro Piano Records, for which his 20th-century collection of Messiaen, Respighi, Ligeti, and Carl Vine was a New York Times Critic’s Choice. As well as streaming to audiences worldwide on Medici TV, his performances have been broadcast by Britain’s BBC TV and BBC Radio 3, Radio France, and Japan’s NHK Satellite Television.

One of today’s most distinguished piano teachers, Babayan counts Ching-Yun Hu, Stanislav Khristenko, and Daniil Trifonov among his former students. Having previously taught for many years at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he now serves on the piano faculties of New York’s Juilliard School and Dallas’s SMU Meadows School of the Arts, where he is the Joel Estes Tate Endowed Chair in Piano and Artist in Residence.

Sergei Babayan was born into a musical family in Armenia during the Soviet occupation. After receiving his first piano lessons from Luiza Markaryan and Georgy Saradjev, a leading representative of the St. Petersburg school and former student of the legendary Vladimir Sofronitsky, he went on to study at the Moscow Conservatory with Lev Naumov, Vera Gornostayeva, and Mikhail Pletnev. In 1989, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Babayan came to the United States, drawing international notice with first-prize wins at the Cleveland, Robert Casadesus, Palm Beach, Hamamatsu, and Scottish International Piano Competitions. Now an American citizen, he makes his home in New York City.

Dubbed “a major artist” by the Miami Herald and a “quiet maverick” by the Daily Telegraph, pianist Alexander Korsantia has been praised for the “clarity of his technique, richly varied tone and dynamic phrasing” (Baltimore Sun), and a “piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist” (Calgary Sun). The Boston Globe found his interpretation of his signature piece, Pictures at an Exhibition, to be “a performance that could annihilate all others one has heard.” And the Birmingham Post wrote: “his intensely responsive reading was shot through with a vein of constant fantasy, whether musing or mercurial.” Ever since winning Gold Medal at the Artur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and the First Prize at the Sidney International Piano Competition, Korsantia’s career has taken him to many of the world’s major concert halls, collaborating with renowned artists such as Vadim Repin, Christoph Eschenbach, Gianandrea Noseda, Valery Gergiev, Paavo Järvi, Dan Ettinger and Carlos Prieto among others with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Kirov Orchestra, RAI Orchestra in Turin, The City of Birmingham Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Israel Philharmonic and the Far Cry. He often appears at Boston’s Jordan Hall with his colleagues Miriam Fried, Kim Kashkashian, Paul Biss and Laurence Lesser in chamber music concerts. Mr. Korsantia has been on the jury panel of many international piano competitions included the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and Cleveland International Piano Competition.

In the current and coming seasons Mr. Korsantia performs Prokofiev’s Third Concerto with Boston Philharmonic, Akron Symphony and Xiamen Philharmonic, Rachmaninoff’s Third with Israel Symphony, Prokofiev’s Second with Stuttgart Philharmoniker and Telavi Festival in Georgia, Beethoven’s Fourth with Israel Philharmonic and Haifa Symphony, Chopin Second with Jerusalem Symphony, Israel Chamber Orchestra and Ingolstadt Chamber Orchestra. With The Far Cry chamber group he performed Galina Ustvolskaya’s Piano Concerto in Boston and Tbilisi, Georgia. In addition, he plays recitals at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, National Concert Hall in Taipei, the Walnut Hill School, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Greenfield Village (Michigan), Blaibach, Germany, Lodz (Poland), Jordan Hall in Boston, Cincinnati Conservatory, Shanghai Concert Hall, Gulangyu Concert Hall as well as extensive recital tours in Israel and Georgia. He will perform Shostakovich’s First Concerto with New Orleans Philharmonic as well as Rachmaninoff’s Second with Edmonton Symphony. He will record the latter with Stuttgart Philharmonic Dan Ettinger conducting.

Bel Air Music and Piano Classics are among the recording labels Mr. Korsantia has worked with. The most recent release is a collection of Beethoven (Eroica Variations), Rachmaninoff (Chopin Variations), and Copland (Piano Variations). His solo piano transcription of Ravel’s La valse has been published by Sikorski Musikverlage in 2018.

Alexander Korsantia was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. He later moved with his family to the United States. In 1999, he was awarded one of the most prestigious national awards, the Order of Honor, bestowed on him by then-President Eduard Shevardnadze. He is a recipient of the Golden Wing award (2015) and Georgia’s National State Prize (1997). Korsantia resides in Boston where he is a Professor of Piano on the faculty of the New England Conservatory. Mr. Korsantia is the artistic adviser of the annual music festival “From Easter to Ascension” in Georgia.

A prize-winner of The Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano (1991), as well as F. Liszt’s International Piano Competition in Utrecht (1992) –  so far, the only Polish winner of this prestigious competition. Zbigniew Raubo is also a laureate of The Karol Szymanowski Competition in Łodź (1987).

He graduated with honors from The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, where he mastered his skills under the guidance of famous teacher Prof. Andrzej Jasiński and later became his university assistant. Currently, he holds the title of Professor while teaching at Academy in Katowice.

Zbigniew Raubo has performed with all philharmonic orchestras in Poland (including Sinfonia Varsovia and NOSPR). He has over 30 compositions for piano and orchestra in his repertoire. He has performed at major music festivals, such, as The Chopin Festival in Vancouver, “Poolse Meesters” in Belgium, Campos do Jordao Festival in Brazil, Duszniki International Piano Festival, and Festiwal Pianistyki Polskiej in Słupsk.

He has recorded a number of compositions for phonographic companies in Poland and abroad, among others for: the Japanese division of Deutsche Grammophon,  RCA as well as DUX, and Żuk Records.

As a chamber musician, he has had a chance to collaborate with: The Silesian String Quartet, The Wilanów Quartet, and The Camerata Quartet, but also with outstanding soloists, such as Bartłomiej Nizioł and Urszula Kryger. He is active pedagogically; besides his responsibilities at The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, he also gives various masterclasses for piano students and works as a consultant for music schools. As a Jury member, he participated in The Polish Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, International Chopin Competition in ASIA, and Paderewski International Piano Competition in Bydgoszcz.

Among his students, there are winners of various musical competitions, among others: The International Liszt Piano Competition in Wrocław, The Liszt Competition in Parma, The International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, but also The Polish Piano Festival in Słupsk, Karol Szymanowski International Competition in Katowice and many others.

Born and raised in Foggia, Italy, Antonio Pompa-Baldi won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 1999 and embarked on a career that continues to extend across five continents. A top prize winner at the 1998 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition of Paris, Pompa-Baldi also won a silver medal at the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Pompa-Baldi appears at the world’s major concert venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Milan’s Sala Verdi, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Shanghai’s Grand Theatre, and Paris’ Salle Pleyel, to name a few.

He has collaborated with leading conductors including Hans Graf, James Conlon, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Theodore Kuchar, Benjamin Zander, Louis Lane, and Keith Lockhart. He has performed with ensembles and colleagues such as the Takács String Quartet, trumpeter Alison Balsom, cellist Sharon Robinson, Juilliard Quartet violinist Areta Zhulla, and principals of The Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, and New York Philharmonic, among others.

With a concerto repertoire including more than 60 works, Pompa-Baldi has performed cycles of all the Rachmaninoff piano concertos, the five Beethoven piano concertos, and both Brahms piano concertos, among many other mainstream works.

He also loves performing new scores, and lesser-known ones, from premiering piano concertos by Italian composers Roberto Piana and Luca Moscardi, to resurrecting the early A minor Respighi Piano Concerto, the Howard Ferguson Concerto and the Cecile Chaminade Konzertstück, to name a few. Pompa-Baldi has played recitals in most major venues over the world, attaining the same balance between featuring beloved works from the standard repertoire, and showcasing new or unjustly neglected masterpieces. Among recent stops on his tours, he performed in Vienna, Austria; Malaga, Spain; Nancy, France; New York; Cape Town, South Africa; Husum Festival, Germany; Duszniki Chopin Festival, Poland. Just before the pandemic, he toured China, playing in Beijing, Wuhan, Nanjing, Dalian, Guangzhou, as well as the Lang Lang festivals in Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

Mr. Pompa-Baldi has recorded over 30 CDs to date, for various labels including Centaur Records, Steinway, Brilliant Classics, Harmonia Mundi, TwoPianists, and Azica. Among them, the complete piano and chamber music works of Grieg, theJosef Rheinberger Piano Sonatas, the complete Hummel Piano Sonatas, and CDs dedicated to Brahms, Schumann, Liszt, Respighi, and Rachmaninoff.

For the Steinway label, Pompa-Baldi recorded a disc of songs by Francis Poulenc and Edith Piaf, arranged for solo piano, to commemorate the 50th year of the passing of both French musical icons, as well as a CD titled “Napoli”, which features new piano versions of famous Neapolitan songs.

His latest releases feature Concertos for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra by Mendelssohn, Haydn, and Hummel, as well as a CD of newly composed Opera Fantasies on La Bohème and Carmen, by Roberto Piana.

The Steinway label also recently released Pompa-Baldi’s piano transcription of the Respighi B minor Violin Sonata, The score has been published by the Japanese publishing house Muse Press.

Antonio Pompa-Baldi is a Steinway Artist since 2003. Pompa-Baldi is on the faculty at CIM as Artist-in-Residence and Distinguished Professor of Piano.

He is often invited to judge international piano competitions such as the Cleveland, Hilton Head, E-Competition (Minneapolis), BNDES Rio de Janeiro, and Edward Grieg (Bergen), among many others. He serves as president of the jury and artistic advisor for the San Jose International Piano Competition since 2006.

From 2009 to 2012, Pompa-Baldi lead the Manuel Rueda program in Santo Domingo, working with Fundación por la Musica, mentoring young Dominican pianists.

In 2015, Pompa-Baldi founded the Todi International Music Masters festival, of which he is artistic director and faculty member. This summer festival takes place every August in the beautiful Italian town of Todi. It features 15 concerts in 15 days, masterclasses with internationally renowned faculty members, and students from all over the world.

His students have been prizewinners in important competitions such as Marguerite Long, Hilton Head, Isang Yun, and Gina Bachauer. He is regularly invited to teach masterclasses in countless universities, music schools, and festivals in the US and all over the world. He holds honorary professorships from the Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang Conservatories, as well as several other institutions.

The Nashville International Chopin Piano Competition is delighted to welcome him back to serve on the jury a second time, having been a member of the 2023 NICPC jury prior to this.

https://www.pompabaldi.com/

Natalia Troull began studying piano in her native St. Peterburg. She later moved to Moscow where she graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. Among her teachers were professors Y. Zak, M. Voskresensky and T. Kravchenko.

Her performance career was launched when she won first prize at the Belgrade International Piano Competition in 1983. However, the biggest success came in 1986 she won the silver medal at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition. The public was swept off its feet by her interpretation of composers such as Schubert and Stravinsky. Her “Petroushka” suite left an everlasting impression on the public and critics alike.

In 1993, Natalia Troull was awarded the Grand Prix at the Piano Masters Competition in Monte-Carlo (where only winners of international competitions are accepted as participants).

Natalia Troull’s complete control and fantastic virtuosity place her in a class of her own, and she is in great demand as a performer all over the world. Among the distinguished orchestras with whom she has performed are the London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Monte-Carlo, Tonhalle Symphony Orchestra and all of the major Russian Symphony Orchestras.

Natalia Troull has also played with such conductors as Raphael Frubeck de Burgos, Raymond Leppard, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Eri Klas, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Vassily Sinaisky, Yuri Temirkanov and many others.

Her repertoire includes over 50 concertos, of which the Tchaikovsky concerto has proved to be the most popular, the pianist having performed the work on over one hundred occasions in the world’s leading concert halls. Her most brilliant performances of the Tchaikovsky concerto were in Hollywood Bowl under Eri Klas and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and in Suntory Hall with Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Koizumi Kazuhiro (1998-99 season).

Natalia’s performances today are remarkable for her total absorption in the music her unique stage presence and technical mastery in presenting a wide repertoire of works.

Natalia Troull is frequently invited to teach to the U.S.A., Japan, Italy, Germany and South America. She is Professor at the Moscow Tchaikovky Concervatory. She is permanently a jury member of many international piano competitions.

Recordings:

- Prokofiev – The Complete Piano Sonatas under the “DML Classic” label (Japan);
- Chopin recital including two Sonatas, the Fantasy and Mazurkas;
- Schubert recital including the Wanderer-Fantasy, Impromptus op.90 and Schubert-Liszt Song transcriptions.
- Tchaikovski - The Seasons op.37bis, Children`s Album op.39
- Debussy & Chopin - Etudes
- Schumann - 3 violin sonatas with Alexey Lundin

Jan - Mar 2025