Piano studies in England with Maria Diamond Curcio; Vienna Academy of Music (Austria), with Dieter Weber; and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Conservatory (Russia). Doctoral degree, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki.

Born in Helsinki in 1954, Matti Raekallio studied in his home country of Finland, as well as with Maria Curcio in London, Dieter Weber at the Vienna Academy of Music, and at the Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) Conservatory. He has been an active concert performer, making his American debut in 1981 at the Carnegie (Weill) Recital Hall. Since then, he has made regular tours of the US, including solo recitals and performances with several American orchestras. He has performed complete cycles of the 32 Beethoven Sonatas, the 10 Scriabin Sonatas, and the 9 Prokofiev Sonatas, as well as a total of 62 piano concertos. He has made approximately 20 CD recordings for Ondine.

In 2007, Matti Raekallio joined the faculty of the Juilliard School in New York. He previously held professorships at the University of Music and Drama in Hanover, Germany, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Swedish Royal College of Music in Stockholm, and Western Michigan University in the US. Matti Raekallio's students include several first prize winners in major international piano competitions. He frequently serves as a juror and gives regular master classes throughout the US, Europe, and Asia.

Matti Raekallio's doctorate in music at the Sibelius Academy focused on the history of piano fingering. He subsequently became a member of an international research team investigating pianists' choice of fingering from the viewpoint of cognitive psychology. From 1998 through 2000, he served as a member of the Research Council for Culture and Society of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

http://www.ondine.net/?lid=en&cid=3.2&oid=432

Tian Ying Associate Professor of Keyboard Performance Frost School of Music, University of Miami

Praised by the Boston Globe as “one of the finest pianists active in America”, Tian Ying, winner of many prestigious awards, including high honors at the Eighth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1989, has become well known for his eloquent, poetic, dramatically intense performances. With his reputation for unusually searching and profound interpretations played at the highest level of virtuoso accomplishment, Ying has earned a distinguished place among today’s most exciting, original and accomplished artists of his generation.

Tian Ying has appeared with numerous orchestras, such as the Rochester Philharmonic, Louisville Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta at Orchestra Hall, symphonies of Atlanta, Fort Worth, Toledo, Columbus, Colorado, Hartford, Jacksonville, Spokane, Oakland, Madison, Wichita, Ann Arbor, Shanghai, and Hong Kong Philharmonic, among others. Solo recitals have taken Tian Ying across North America, Europe, and from Casablanca to Seoul, and he frequently conducts master classes in universities and colleges around the country.

During the 2001-02 season alone, Tian Ying performed 9 different concerti with orchestras across the US. The Boston Globe chose Tian Ying’s 1993 Bank of Boston Celebrity Series concert as one of the Top Ten in classical music events. There have been many articles written about Tian Ying, including profiles in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and People Magazine.

http://www.miami.edu/frost/index.php/keyboard_performance/Faculty/TianYingChair/

Thomas Lanners Professor of Piano Department of Music, Oklahoma State University

Thomas Lanners has appeared as a solo and collaborative pianist and clinician throughout the U.S. and abroad, presenting his New York solo debut in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in 2004. His performances have been broadcast nationally and internationally on programs such as American Public Media’s Performance Today and RTÉ Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany in Ireland, among many others. He currently serves as a Professor of Piano at Oklahoma State University.

Lanners’ latest recording, Ned Rorem: Piano Works, Volume 2, was released worldwide in 2009 by Centaur Records. The disc has received much critical praise, including Donald Rosenberg’s review in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Thomas Lanners brings exceptional detail and urgency to the repertoire. Grade: A.” In his American Record Guide review of Lanners’ previous CD, Ned Rorem: The Three Piano Sonatas, Mark Lehman wrote: “Anyone who cares about mainstream 20th Century piano music should seek out this superlative recording.” Jed Distler of ClassicsToday.com wrote of his 2005 release, Touches of Bernstein: The Complete Published Piano Music of Leonard Bernstein: “Thomas Lanners totally understands this music, pointing up the jazzy qualities to idiomatic perfection … Lanners’ loving mastery easily holds its own in any company. Warmly recommended.”

Thomas will appear on the prestigious Piano Artist Master Class Series at the NYU-Steinhardt School in February 2012. He presented a master class, lessons and two lectures during a one-week residency at the Eastman School of Music in 2008. Thomas presented sessions at the 2009, 2005 and 2001 Music Teachers National Association conferences, and his feature articles have been published in Clavier and American Music Teacher magazines. Lanners received his Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the Eastman School. His major teachers include Barry Snyder, John Perry and Jerome Lowenthal.

Faculty Artists

Gloria Chien Prize winner: World Piano and San Antonio Competitions; collaborative pianist, Chameleon Arts Boston, Music @ Menlo

Pianist Gloria Chien has been praised by Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe for "a wondrously rich palette of colors, which she mixes with dashing bravado and with an uncanny precision of calibration…Chien's performance had it all, and it was fabulous."

Dr. Chien has presented solo recitals at the Gardner Museum, Harvard Musical Association, the Monadnock Music Festival in New Hampshire, the Caramoor Festival in New York State, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She has appeared as a featured soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall under the baton of Maestro Keith Lockhart and Thomas Dausgaard. In addition, she has been soloist with the New England Conservatory Honors Orchestra under Maestro Sergiu Comissiona, and the NEC Youth Philharmonic conducted by Benjamin Zander. Dr. Chien was invited to travel with the Massachusetts delegation and former Governor William Weld to perform several concerts in Chile. Dr. Chien has attended the Verbier Music Festival in Switzerland in 1999, as well as the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA in 2001.

In 1994, Dr. Chien won first prize in the Harry Dubbs Memorial Competition, the Harvard Musical Association Achievement Award, the New England Conservatory Preparatory School Concerto Competition, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra Youth Concerto Competition. In 1995, she placed second in the Fite Family National Piano Competition, as well as in the Oberlin International Piano Competition. She was the winner of the New England Conservatory Piano Department Concerto Competition in 1998, and has recently placed fifth at the 2000 World Piano Competition in Cincinnati. She was the third prize winner of the 2000 San Antonio International Piano Competition where she also received the prize for the Best Performance of the Commissioned Work.

Gloria Chien began playing the piano at the age of five in her native Taiwan, where she won both divisions of the National Piano Competition before coming to the United States when she was fourteen. She has completed a masters degree and an undergraduate degree at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and recently earned her Doctoral of Musical Arts Degree. Her private teachers have included Russell Sherman and Wha-Kyung Byun.

Dr. Chien is currently a member of the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston and an assistant professor at the Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn. Her recording of music for violin and piano by Grazyna Bacewicz with fellow Chameleon Joanna Kurkowicz was recently released on Chandos.

http://directory.leeuniversity.edu/MaintainDirectory.aspx?op=Bios&ID=502