José Feghali

José Feghali burst upon the music world in 1985

when he won the Gold Medal in the Seventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Ten days later, he performed his United States recital debut to a sold-out hall in Pasadena, California. Today, he is a celebrated artist who has performed over 800 concerts worldwide with renowned orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Gewandhaus, Royal Concertgebouw, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, London Symphony, Birmingham Symphony Orchestra,

BBC Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic and,

in the U. S. with the Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Houston, Dallas, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Baltimore, National, Jacksonville and Nashville symphony orchestras.He has collaborated with eminent conductors, such as Kurt Masur, Neeme Järvi, John Nelson, James DePriest, Yuri Temirkanov, Leonard Slatkin, Kurt Sanderling, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Christoph Eschenbach, Eduardo Mata, Sergiu Comissiona, Philippe Entremont, Andrew Litton, Zdenek Macal, Hans Graf, David Zinman and Hans Vonk.

Among his recitals on prestigious stages in the United States are those at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and in major halls in Los Angeles and Chicago, where the press hailed him as a pianist “whose gift is musicianship on the most rarefied level.” Others include the Kravis and Meyerson Symphony centers, and performances on the Cliburn Concert series and Ravinia Festival.

His extensive worldwide engagements include the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Eastern Europe, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and Latin America. As a chamber musician, Mr. Feghali has collaborated with the renowned flutist James Galway, cellists Truls Mørk, Antonio Meneses and Daniel

Gaisford, violinists Régis Pasquier, Olivier Charlier and Emanuel Borok, duo piano with André Watts, and performances of Richard Strauss’ Enoch Arden with tenor Jon Vickers. Mr. Feghali is an Artist/Faculty member and Associate Director of the Mimir Chamber Music Festival in Fort Worth, and a regular performer

at the “Classical Action/Performing Artists Against Aids” benefit concerts.

Born in Brazil, Mr. Feghali gave his first public performance at age five and appeared with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra when he was eight. When he was fifteen, he moved to London to study with Maria Curcio Diamond and later was a scholarship student at the Royal Academy of Music with Christopher Elton.

Recordings by Mr. Feghali include a compact disc of music inspired by dance for Koss Classics and his live recording from the Van Cliburn Competition on the VAI label. Recent recordings include an all–Schumann program and an all–Brahms program with cellist Daniel Gasiform on the Anacapa Music label. For Naxos, Mr. Feghali, a major advocate of Brazilian music, recorded Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas brasileria no. 3 for Piano and Orchestra with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn.

Mr. Feghali has a special interest in recording technology and is the producer and re-mastering engineer for the retrospective set of nine compact discs for Video Artists International and VAI Audio featuring the live performances of past medalists in the Van Cliburn Competitions. He is Artist–in–Residence at Texas Christian University and serves as Vice President and Executive Director for the new Anacapa Music label.   

José Feghali Web site

Classical and Jazz Fellows.

Dr. Harrison judges for international piano competitions and serves on local, regional and national arts committees and boards. He was a music consultant for Sky magazine of Delta Airlines and co-produced a highly acclaimed APA series of three compact discs on the Harmonia Mundi label, which is marketed internationally. As a concert artist, Dr. Harrison performed with critical success on two occasions at Weill Hall of Carnegie Hall, and with his colleague,Lana Johns, performed extensively in Europe and the United States.

Prior to his appointment with the American Pianist Association, Dr. Harrison was on the faculties at Davidson College in North Carolina and Mississippi State University, where he was also Director of the Mississippi Piano Showcase and Touring Artist for the Mississippi Arts Commission. Dr. Harrison received degrees from the University of North Carolina, Indiana University and Northwestern University. He continued with his education in Switzerland, Austria and Italy, where he studied with Guido Agosti. He lives in Indianapolis and, in addition to his music activities, pursues interests in contemporary art and architecture.

American Pianists Association Web site

American pianist Robert McDonald has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, and the Far East as a soloist and in chamber recitals. His leading violin partners have been Isaac Stern and Midori. He also performs with Yung Uck Kim, Nadja Salerno–Sonnenberg and Elmar Oliverira, among other artists.

Mr. McDonald has a strong commitment to music education. He is on the piano faculties of both the

Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music

and is director of the keyboard program of the Taos School of Music and Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico. He is a former faculty member at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Oberlin and the Peabody Conservatories, and gives classes regularly at the Glenn Gould Professional School in Toronto. Other summer teaching and festival activities include those in Bergen, Besançon, Lucerne, Montreux, Salzburg, Aldeburgh, and Schleswig­–Holstein festivals in Europe, the Marlboro, Brevard and Caramoor festivals in the United States, and the International School of Musical and Arts and the Banff Center in Canada. He also gives piano and chamber music master classes at prominent universities and music schools in the United States, Canada, Japan and Korea.

An active chamber musician, he has performed with the Juilliard, American, Muir, Takács, Brentano, Fine Arts, St. Lawrence, Borromeo, Shanghai, Orlando, and Chicago quartets, as well as with Musicians from

Marlboro on several of their tours. He has also appeared as soloist with the San Francisco, Baltimore,

Milwaukee, Omaha, and Curtis symphony orchestras, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional of Costa Rica, and the Orchestra Sinfonica Haydn di Bolzano e Trento in Italy. In addition, he has given concerts for the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, NHK and BBC television Worldwide.

Among numerous awards, prizes, and grants,

Mr. McDonald won the Gold Medal at the Busoni International Piano Competition in Italy, and top prizes

at the William Kapell and Washington International Competitions in the United States. He is also the recipient of the National Federation of Music Clubs

Artist Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Grant, and a Career Grant from the

Philadelphia Foundation Arthur Hill Fund.

Mr. McDonald’s extensive recordings include those for Sony Classical, Vox, Bridge, Musical Heritage, CRI and ASV. An album of French sonata repertoire with Midori for Sony Classical received the Deutscher Schallplatten Critic’s prize in 2002.

A magna cum laude graduate of Lawrence University in Wisconsin, where Theodore Rehl was his principal teacher, Mr. McDonald continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music with Seymour Lipkin, Rudolf Serkin, and Mieczyslaw Horszowski; at the Juilliard School with Beveridge Webster; and at the Manhattan School of Music with Gary Graffman.

Robert McDonald's biography on Taos School of Music Web site