Speaker Biographies: 2012-2013
BRIAN CHUNG is Senior Vice President of Kawai America Corporation. He is chair of the MTNA Foundation Fund Development Committee, a 2004 MTNA Foundation Fellow, and recipient of the 2010 MTNA Distinguished Service Award. He is also co-author of Improvisation at the Piano: A Systematic Approach for the Classically Trained Pianist (Alfred Publishing 2007), co-author of the Recreational Music Making Handbook for Piano Teachers (Alfred 2009) and author of Expressions of Faith: Eight Inventive Explorations of Classic Hymns for Solo Piano (Alfred 2008) and Expressions of Christmas (Alfred 2011). After receiving an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, he studied piano and conducting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London) as a Rotary Foundation Scholar. Returning to the States, he pursued jazz studies as the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. After several years as a professional musician, private teacher and composer, he completed a Master of Management degree at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. His business pursuits eventually led him to Kawai, where he has spent the past two decades. With a diverse career that includes experience as a performer, arranger, teacher, author, conference speaker and music industry executive, Mr. Chung is devoted to the cause of advancing music participation across America.
Pianist GILA GOLDSTEIN has served on the piano faculty at Boston University's School of Music and Boston University's Tanglewood Institute since September 2010. Prior positions included Columbus State University in Georgia and the University of Florida, in addition to private and conservatory teaching in New York City. She has conducted master classes and adjudicated international and national competitions in the United States, Israel, China, Hong Kong and the Philippines. She is a frequent concert performer around the world, as a soloist and collaborative artist. Her most notable performances included the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquesta Da Camera in Mexico City and Lincoln Symphony Orchestra in Nebraska among others, as well as recitals and concerts at Lincoln Center in New York City, South Bank Center in London, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Musée de Louvre in Paris, Progetto Martha Argerich in Lugano, Beijing Concert Hall in China, Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Old First Church in San Francisco, Gardner Museum in Boston, Dame Myra Hess concert series in Chicago, Henry Crown Hall in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Museum.
A Board member of the American Liszt Society and the Founder-President of its New York Chapter, Ms. Goldstein is a frequent guest performer at the ALS annual festivals. A champion of the music of Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim, Ms. Goldstein has recorded two volumes of his entire piano and chamber works on the Centaur label, recordings which have received rave reviews worldwide. She is an alumna of the Manhattan School of Music and the Tel-Aviv University's Academy of Music, where she studied with Nina Svetlanova and Victor Derevianko.
JANE MAGRATH is well-known as an author, clinician, and pianist. Her book The Pianist's Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature has become a classic reference work for pianists throughout the country, and Magrath's work in the area of the standard classical teaching literature has been central to the current revival of interest in this music throughout the U.S. She currently has more than thirty-five volumes published with Alfred Publishing, Magrath has served as Piano Coordinator for National Conventions of Music Teachers National Association and given presentations at MTNA National Conventions, the European Piano Teachers Association Conference, the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy, the World Piano Pedagogy Conference. She was named the first recipient of the MTNA/Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award for the Outstanding Contribution to Piano Pedagogy. For many years she contributed New Music Reviews to Clavier and the column Polyphony to The American Music Teacher and continues her column Musings through Clavier Companion. Magrath currently serves as an editor for the Piano Pedagogy Forum. A native of South Carolina, Magrath received her education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Wesleyan College, and was the first person to receive the D.M. in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from Northwestern University. A faculty member at the University of Oklahoma since 1981, she received a Regents' Award for Superior Teaching and a Rinsland Award for Excellence in Educational Research. She was recently named Rothbaum Presidential Professor of Excellence in the Arts and serves as Director of Piano Pedagogy.
Hailed by the Boston Globe as “a firecracker of a pianist” and “master of his instrument,” KARL PAULNACK has partnered vocal and instrumental soloists, chamber groups, orchestras, conductors and opera companies in nearly a thousand concerts internationally. He has appeared at Alice Tully, CAMI, Carnegie, Merkin and Weil recital halls, and also at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall, the Library of Congress and the Hollywood Bowl. Committed to a diverse, comprehensive practice of collaborative musicianship as an artist/teacher, Paulnack has served as music division director of The Boston Conservatory since 2002. He has co-chaired the highly acclaimed accompanying and coaching department of the University of Minnesota, and served on the faculties of the Tanglewood Music Center, University of Southern California, Ithaca College and Music Academy of the West. He holds an undergraduate degree in solo piano from Eastman and completed the M.M. and D.M.A. degrees at USC, where his teachers included Gwendolyn Koldofsky and Brooks Smith. As an advocate for music and the arts, Dr. Paulnack is increasingly in demand as a keynote speaker and lecturer. His speech, "Why Music Matters," has been translated into six languages and appeared on nearly 50,000 web pages, in print publications such as the Christian Science Monitor, and in the program books of numerous symphony orchestras and concert series around the world. In spring 2009, Linda Ronstadt quoted his speech during her official testimony to the United States Congress on behalf of funding for the arts.
Since her London début, Israeli-born pianist SALLY PINKAS has concertized widely in the United States, Europe, Russia, China and Africa, as soloist and as a member of the Hirsch-Pinkas Piano Duo (with husband Evan Hirsch). She has participated in summer festivals at Marlboro, Tanglewood, Aspen, Kfar Blum (Israel), Rocca di Mezzo (Italy) and Pontlevoy (France), and has appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops, Aspen Philharmonia, Jupiter Symphony, and the Dobrich Chamber Orchestra (Bulgaria). Her discography includes Debussy’s Twelve Etudes and Estampes (Centaur), Rochberg’s Piano works (Naxos), Bread and Roses: Piano works by Christian Wolff (Mode), and Fauré’s Thirteen Nocturnes (Musica Omnia), named one of 2002’s best CDs by The Boston Globe. A Schumann solo disc, as well as Fauré’s two Piano Quartets were released on MSR Classics. Pinkas is currently serving as Professor of Music at Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire), and as Pianist-in-residence at the College’s Hopkins Center for the Arts. She lives in Medford, Massachusetts.
PAUL SHEFTEL is a leader in keyboard studies and has performed, lectured, and conducted workshops in nearly every state. His published materials and software are widely used throughout the USA, as well as in Europe and Asia. A pioneer in the creation of instructional materials using MIDI technology, he has also composed electronic orchestrations to support Carl Fischer's "Music Pathways" piano method by Olson, Bianchi, and Blickenstaff, as well as the Bastien Piano Method. Paul was born in Italy and grew up in Los Angeles, where he studied piano with Frances Robyn and Alfred Pryce Quinn and theory and composition with Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco. He spent two of his teen years in Paris, France studying piano with Lazare Levy and theory and composition with Alexandre Tansman. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees from Juilliard (studying with Edward Steuermann), he went to Italy on a Fulbright grant where he worked with Guido Agosti. While in Italy, he formed the two-piano team of Rollino and Sheftel; the duo performed extensively in Europe and the United States, both in recital and with such orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, The Amsterdam Concetgebouw, Royal Philharmonic and The Chicago Symphony among many others. He has appeared both as part of his two-piano team and in solo recitals in many of New York's leading concert halls including Town Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, and Hunter College. He has served on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and Hunter College, has been piano editor for Carl Fischer and is currently on the faculty of the Juilliard School where he teaches Piano Pedagogy. He maintains a private teaching studio in New York City.