Piano Competition

The competition is open to all young pianists between the ages of 6 and 18 years old. All previous "First Prize" winners may not compete until eligible for the next level.

2020 Competition Details (online)

Featured Composer: Beethoven and his Contemporaries: Classical Style and Its Legacy

Application Deadline: Sunday, September 27, 2020 at 11:59 PM

Registration fee: A registration fee of $30 (non-refundable) must accompany each application.

For more information: Any questions regarding repertoire or the competition should be directed to Dr. Jacob Ertl.

Apply Online

You will need to have ready:

The composers, title and duration of the pieces you are performing
The YouTube video link(s) of your repertoire pieces
A credit card for payment of the application fee

2020 Competition Winners

List of Winners

2020 Competition Judges

Young Pianist Division - Gary Fisher

Dr. Gary Fisher has been a member of the piano faculty of Nazareth College’s School of Music and the Coordinator of its Community Music Program since 2001. Between 1991 and 2001, he was a member of the faculty of the Community Education Division of the Eastman School of Music. While residing in the Boston area for many years, Dr. Fisher was Chair of the Faculty at the South Shore Conservatory (Hingham, Massachusetts); he also served as Dean of the Music Division at the Performing Arts School of Worcester.

He has been awarded academic honors at each of the institutions from which he received his degrees. His principal teachers at these schools have included Frina Arschanska Boldt and Stephen Manes at SUNY Buffalo, Maria Clodes Jaguaribe at Boston University, and Jeffrey Kahane and David Burge at The Eastman School of Music. Extensive work with the eminent American pianist and pedagogue, Leonard Shure, for whom he served as teaching assistant at The New England Conservatory in the early 1980s, is of central significance to his pianistic and musical training. While residing in the Boston area for many years, Dr. Fisher was Chair of the Faculty at the South Shore Conservatory (Hingham, Massachusetts); he also served as Dean of the Music Division at the Performing Arts School of Worcester.

Dr. Fisher is an active adjudicator in the upstate New York area. He has been very active in the New York State Music Teachers Association, having served as its President from 2006 through 2008. He is a member of the Rochester Piano Teachers Guild.

Dr. Fisher is a faculty member the Nazareth College School of Music and was Coordinator of its Community Music Program. He has been awarded academic honors at each of the institutions from which he received his degrees. His principal teachers have included Frina Arschanska Boldt and Stephen Manes at SUNY Buffalo, Maria Clodes Jaguaribe at Boston University, and Jeffrey Kahane and David Burge at The Eastman School of Music. Extensive work with the eminent American pianist and pedagogue, Leonard Shure, for whom he served as teaching assistant at The New England Conservatory in the early 1980s, is of central significance to his pianistic and musical training. Dr. Fisher has been very active in the New York State Music Teachers Association, having served as President from 2006 through 2008.

Young Pianist Division - Beverly Smoker

Junior Division - Asami Hagiwara

Asami Hagiwara.jpg Asami Hagiwara has been praised for her “tone-color palette of great warmth and nuanced richness” (Fuldaer Zeitung). Recent appearances include concerts in Austria, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the U.S.A. She has been invited to perform in music festivals including the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the Grieg Festival, Joutseno Art Summer, the Liszt-Garrison Festival, Mänttä Music Festival, and the PIANALE International Academy. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Piano at the Onondaga Community College (Syracuse, NY).

In addition to her wide range of performing repertoire from Baroque to contemporary music, Hagiwara specializes in works of Nordic composers, especially those of Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius. Her doctoral document, Guide to the Published Solo Piano Music of Jean Sibelius, provides an overview of Sibelius’s rarely performed 115 piano works. As an American-Scandinavian Foundation research fellow, she spent a year at the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki, Finland), which deepened her understanding of the Nordic sound and composers.

Most recently, Hagiwara was an Assistant Professor of Piano and the Chair of the Piano Area at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She also held several prior teaching positions as lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville (Platteville, WI), the Iowa State University (Ames, IA), and the University of Dubuque (Dubuque, IA), and was the Coordinator of the University of Iowa’s Pre-College Piano Conservatory (PCPC).

As a guest teacher, Hagiwara has been invited to music festivals including Encontro Internacional de Pianistas de Piracicaba (Piracicaba, Brazil), Encontro Internacional de Pianistas do Vale do Aço (Timóteo, Brazil), Northshore Summer Music Experience (Duluth, MN), the University of Iowa’s Youth Summer Camp (Iowa City, IA), and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp (Twin Lake, Michigan). She formerly was the director of UMD Piano Day, an annual community outreach event, and the Northshore Summer Music Experience Piano Division. In addition, she frequently serves on competition and contest jury panels for organizations such as Edward Grieg Society, MTNA, NFMC, and Thursday Musical.

Hagiwara has been a recipient of American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship, Clara Rolland Award, Thomas J. Smith Award, and Gertraude Weber Gassman Award. Her former piano teachers include Erik T. Tawaststjerna at the Sibelius Academy, Ksenia Nosikova at the University of Iowa, William Heiles at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Marialena Fernandes at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, and Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago. www.asamihagiwara.com

Junior Division - Nicholas Susi

Nicholas Susi.jpg Described in The WholeNote as “an innovative musician and aggressive thinker with a gift for keyboard brilliance,” Dr. Nicholas Susi enjoys a multifaceted career living out his deep love for music. His varied activities in recent seasons have included solo and concerto performances, masterclasses, lectures, community outreach events, and competition adjudication.

His artistry has been recognized through top prizes in national and international piano competitions such as the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artist Award, the Mu Phi Epsilon International Competition, and Klavierfestival Rösrath, while his research has been awarded prestigious grants from such organizations as the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation, and Legacy Foundation for the Arts. These and other grants enabled him to travel, study, and perform music across Europe; the experiences of researching Beethoven in Bonn, Debussy in Paris, and Mozart in Vienna have been central to his development as a musician and to his cosmopolitan understanding of musical styles. Other noteworthy appearances include two concerts for the Princess von Hohenzollern at her castle in Namedy, Germany, his semifinalist recital at the TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, The Netherlands during the 2014 International Franz Liszt Piano Competition, and concerto solos with such orchestras as the Omaha Symphony, Wiener Residenz Orchester, St. Louis Chamber Orchestra, and Philharmonia of Greater Kansas City. His debut recording, Scarlatti Now, was released in late 2016 to critical acclaim; in addition to nationwide radio airplay, the disc was featured on the prestigious Critics’ Choice list (2017) of American Record Guide and was chosen as a 1st place winner of The American Prize in 2018.

A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Susi is currently based out of Duluth, Minnesota where he is Assistant Professor of Music at The College of St. Scholastica. In addition to teaching private lessons in piano, Dr. Susi also coordinates the class piano program and teaches courses in music theory. He completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan, with previous studies at the University of Kansas and at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln as a two-time DAAD grantee. Primary teachers include Zena Ilyashov, Jack Winerock, Nina Tichman, and Arthur Greene. For details on upcoming appearances and further listening, please visit www.nicholas-susi.com.

Senior Division - Albert Kim

Albert Kim.jpg American pianist Albert Kim engages listeners across the country with energetic and unconventional readings of the solo and chamber repertory. Born to South Korean parents, Mr. Kim made his public debut at the age of ten when he substituted for an ailing Vladimir Horowitz to inaugurate the 500,000th Steinway piano at Carnegie Hall. He made his formal recital debuts in the U.S. and Europe as a Carnegie Hall/European Concert Hall Organization Rising Star, followed by recitals at Ravinia, Caramoor and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a member of the former Kim-Jacobsen-Arron Trio. He has appeared with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, Virginia Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica de Tenerife, Eastman Philharmonia, Ensemble Signal and the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, and premiered or recorded works by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Hilary Tann and Robert Bradshaw.

He has performed and taught at the Castleman Quartet Program, Dakota Sky International Piano Festival, Neskowin Chamber Music, Reinhardt Piano Festival and Academy, Dongfang Arts School (Shanghai), Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, Texas State University, University of Central Florida, University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music, Linfield College and the San Francisco International Piano Festival. An active arranger, he frequently performs his own solo transcription of Ravel’s La Valse and directed the world premiere of his chamber instrumental score of Richard Strauss’s Salome in 2014.

Dr. Kim holds degrees from Harvard University and the Eastman School of Music and completed his formal training with Natalya Antonova and Solomon Mikowsky. He is dedicated to the premise that music, whether created today or centuries ago, belongs to those who free themselves of tradition and seek their own voice through a total knowledge of their craft. He is a New Piano Collective artist and the pianist of TableTop Opera, a multimedia performance collective based in Rochester, New York. Dr. Kim is currently Assistant Professor of Piano in the School of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Central Missouri.

Senior Division - Paul Sánchez

Paul Sánchez.jpg Praised as a “great artist” (José Feghali, 2013; Cecilia Rodrigo2019)), Paul Sánchez isa pianist and composer. Of his recent engagements performing music of Ives and Gershwin for Joseph Horowitz’ Music Unwound: American Roots, a program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Horowitz stated, “Sanchez’ account of Rhapsody in Blue was original - the most bewitchingly lyric I have ever encountered.”

In a Fanfare Magazine review of Sánchez’ 2016 CD Magus Insipiens, featuring three of Sánchez’ song cycles, Colin Clarke declares, “This is one of the most beautiful discs in my collection…. Haunting in the extreme,” while WFMT’s Henry Fogel, former president of the League of American Orchestras and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, states, “This is hauntingly beautiful music…. works of originality and a distinctive musical personality.”

Sánchez is a recording artist with seven CD releases as of 2020, and his compositions have been featured on the Soundset Recordings and Albany labels. Releases in 2020/21 include Mysteria Fidei on Innova Records featuring new music by David M. Gordon; Dreams of a New Day with baritone Will Liverman for the Cedille label; an album of new solo piano works by Graham Lynch; and spirituals of Shawn Okpebholo in collaboration with mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and baritone Will Liverman.

Dr. Sánchez is Director of Piano Studies and the International Piano Series at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. He is a co-founder of the San Francisco International Piano Festival, the Charleston Chamber Music Intensive, and Dakota Sky Foundation.

Sánchez, a Fulbright fellow from 2005–2007, earned his Master of Spanish Music degree under Alicia de Larrocha. He studied with Tamás Ungár at Texas Christian University, graduating summa cum laude, and with Douglas Humpherys at the Eastman School of Music, where he completed his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. Sánchez is a New Piano Collective artist.