Guest Artists

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  • Kevin Kenner

    Kevin Kenner

    Artistic Director/ Teaching Artist/Performer

    Recognized internationally as a prime interpreter of the music of Chopin, Kevin Kenner’s career was launched in 1990 when he was awarded the top prize at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. That same year he also won the Terence Judd Award in London and 3rd prize at the 1990 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

    Kenner’s achievements have won him international acclaim. The Chicago Tribune praised him as "one of the finest American pianists to come along in years.” Britain’s Independent described one of his recitals as "...the best performance I have ever heard in the concert hall of all four of Chopin's ‘Ballades’.” The Financial Times hailed Professor Kenner as a "player of grace, subtle variety, and strength with a mature grasp of dramatic structure and proportion.” And the Washington Post proclaimed him "a major talent... an artist whose intellect, imagination and pianism speak powerfully and eloquently." Conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, a former associate of the late Artur Rubinstein, said Professor Kenner’s work was among the most sensitive and beautiful he had ever heard.

    He has concertized and recorded over the last decade as a duo partner of violinist Kyung-Wha Chung and has performed with the Tokyo, Escher, Belcea, Mosaiques, Apollon Musagete, Endellion, and Vogler Quartets. He has been invited to appear at the Verbier Festival, Warsaw’s “Chopin and His Europe” Festival, and the PyeongChang Festival. A distinguished recording artist, Kenner’s interpretations of works by Paderewski and Chopin were each picked as recordings of the month by Gramophone, which also singled out his recording “Resonances” as one of 50 of the greatest recordings of Chopin works. The most recent recording of his own chamber arrangements of the Chopin Concertos was nominated by BBC Magazine for the 2020 Recording of the Year. He was awarded two Fryderyks for his recordings of works of Piazzolla (2006) and concert works of Paderewski (2011).

    After teaching for more than a decade as a professor at London’s Royal College of Music, Kenner accepted a post at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, where he continues to prepare many young talented pianists for international performance careers. Following his three-year tenure as Visiting Professor at the Academy of Music in Łódź, Poland he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2018. In 2019 he was awarded the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumnus Award as well as the Amicus Poloniae Award from the Polish Ambassador to the U.S. In February 2020 he chaired the jury of the Chopin Foundation’s National Chopin Competition in Miami. And in 2021 he served as vice-chairman of the jury of the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

  • Dang Thai Son

    Teaching Artist / Performer

    “A genuine musician” - Isaac Stern 
    An outstanding international musician of our time, Vietnamese - Canadian pianist Dang Thai Son was propelled to the forefront of the musical world in October 1980, when he was awarded the First Prize and Gold Medal at the Xth International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. It was also the first time that a top international competition was won by an Asian pianist. 
    He began piano studies with his mother in Hanoi. Discovered by the Russian pianist Isaac Katz, who was on visit in Vietnam in 1974, he pursued his advanced training at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Russia with Vladimir Natanson and Dmitry Bashkirov. 
    Since winning the Chopin Competition, his international career has taken him to over forty countries, into such world renowned halls as the Lincoln Center (New York), Barbican Center (London), Salle Pleyel (Paris), Herculessaal (Munich), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Opera House (Sydney), and Suntory Hall (Tokyo). 
    He has played with numerous world-class orchestras such as The Philharmonia Orchestra , BBC Philharmonic , City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, St-Petersburg Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal , Czech Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, Dresden Philharmonic Oslo Philharmonic, Warsaw National Philharmonic, Prague Symphony, NHK Symphony, New Japan Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Hungarian State Symphony, Moscow Philharmonic, Russian National Symphony, as well as Virtuosi of Moscow, Sinfonia Varsovia, Vienna Chamber, Zurich Chamber, Royal Swedish Chamber Orchestras, and the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris. Also, he has appeared under the direction of Sir Neville Marriner, Vladimir Ashkenazy , Pinchas Zukerman, Mariss Jansons, Pavvo Jarvi, Ivan Fisher, Frans Bruggen, Vladimir Spivakov, Dimitri Kitaenko, Sakari Oramo and John Nelson among others. 
    Dang Thai Son is frequently invited to give master classes around the world - such as the special class in Berlin in October, 1999, where he taught alongside Murray Perahia and Vladimir Ashkenazy. He has sat on the juries of prestigious competitions such as the Warsaw International Chopin Piano Competition (2005, 2010, 2015, 2021), Cleveland (USA), Clara Haskil (Switzerland), Artur Rubinstein (Tel-Aviv), Hamamatsu, Sendai (Japan), Piano Masters of Monte Carlo, Sviatoslav Richter (Moscow), Prague Spring International, Montreal International Piano Competition, and Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition among others. His pupils garnered top international prizes including Bruce Liu, the most recent winner of the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition 2021 in Warsaw, Poland. 

  • Dmitry Ablogin

    Teaching Artist / Performer

    "A tremendous virtuoso, a great musician with an all-encompassing musical culture." Bruno Monsaingeon 

    Dmitry Ablogin is one of today's most brilliant and innovative keyboard artists. 

    He studied with Vladimir Tropp at the Gnessin Academy in Moscow, from which he graduated with honours in 2012. He continued his education in Germany, studying fortepiano with Jesper B. Christensen at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt. 

    Laureate of the 1st International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments in Warsaw (2018), Dmitry has won prizes in numerous piano competitions, including the Nikolai Rubinstein in Paris, Vera Lotar-Shevchenko in Novosibirsk, German Piano Open in Hanover and Musica Antiqua in Bruges. 

    Dmitry has performed in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Russia, France, the US at the Miami International Piano Festival and in Warsaw at the renowned festival “Chopin and his Europe”. 

    In addition to performing around the world, he is teaching piano and fortepiano at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt.  

    In October 2021 Dmitry has won the 10th International German Piano Award and made his debut at the Alte Oper Frankfurt with Piano Concerto No. 4 by Ludwig van Beethoven. 

  • Shelly Berg

    Performer

    Shelly Berg is a Steinway piano artist and five-time Grammy-nominated arranger, orchestrator, and producer. His album projects Gershwin Reimagined: An American in London (Decca Gold), The Deep (Chesky), The Nearness of You (Arbors), Blackbird (Concord) and The Will (CARS) are critically acclaimed. Berg earned three Grammy nominations in the Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s) category with jazz singer-lyricist Lorraine Feather and international superstar Gloria Estefan, and a fourth Grammy nomination as co-producer of Gloria Estefan: The Standards (Sony). He earned his fifth Grammy nomination as co-arranger of “I Loves You Porgy / There’s a Boat That’s Leavin’ Soon for New York” from the album Rendezvous (2018) featuring jazz singers Clint Holmes and Dee Dee Bridgewater with The Count Basie Orchestra.

    Recent projects include arranging, orchestrating and co-producing the Estefan Family Christmas album, and recording and/or performing with Tony Bennett, Steve Miller, Seal, Lizz Wright, Andra Day, Chris Botti, Renée Fleming, and Arturo Sandoval. He is also the host of a monthly radio show Generation Next on Sirius XM, music director of The Jazz Cruise, and artistic advisor for the Jazz Roots series at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami.

    An award-winning educator with over 40 years of leadership in higher education, Shelly Berg is Dean and Patricia L. Frost Professor of Music at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. He was previously the McCoy/Sample Professor of Jazz Studies at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and a past president of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE). In 2003 he was honored as Educator of the Year by the Los Angeles Jazz Society and in 2002 received the IAJE Lawrence Berk Leadership Award. In 2000 the Los Angeles Times named him one of three “Educators for the Millennium.”

    His textbooks include Essentials of Jazz Theory, the Chop-Monster beginning improvisation series, Rhythm Section Workshop for Jazz Directors (Alfred Music) and Jazz Improvisation: The Goal-Note Method (Kendor). He has appeared as a performer and lecturer throughout the United States as well as in Canada, China, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Japan, Romania and Venezuela.