Artist & Student Accomplishments
Ms. Golandsky has taught and coached pianists at the highest level, including professional pianists and national and international competition winners. Below are the accomplishments of some of the concert artists who have worked with her.
Josu De Solaun
As a First Prize winner of the XIII George Enescu International Piano Competition in Bucharest (founded in 1958 and won by legendary pianists such as Radu Lupu, Elisabeth Leonskaja, and Dmitri Alexeev), the XV José Iturbi International Piano Competition and the First European Union Piano Competition, held in Prague, Spanish pianist Josu De Solaun has been invited to perform in distinguished concert series throughout the world, having made notable appearances in Bucharest (Romanian Athenaeum), Venice (Teatro La Fenice), Saint Petersburg (Mariinsky Theatre), Washington, DC (Kennedy Center), New York (Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Opera), Princeton (Taplin Hall), London (Southbank Centre), Paris (Salle Cortot), Leipzig (Schumann Haus), Taipei (Novel Hall), Mexico City (Sala Silvestre Revueltas), Prague (Nostitz Palace), Rome (Academia de España), Menton (Festival International de Musique), and all major cities of Spain.
Josu is the only pianist from Spain to win the Enescu and Iturbi competitions in their respective histories, and was recently invited to a private reception with the King and Queen of Spain at the Royal Palace after winning the coveted Bucharest prize. In 2019 he was given the title of Officer of Cultural Merit, a state decoration, by Klaus Iohannis, president of Romania. In 2021, he won an ICMA award for best chamber music recording. He is also a poet, having published for EDICTORALIA a volume of poetry in 2021 titled “Las Grietas”.
Photo by Fernando Frade
Gabriela Montero
Gabriela Montero’s visionary interpretations and unique compositional gifts have garnered her critical acclaim and a devoted following on the world stage. Anthony Tommasini remarked in The New York Times that, “Montero’s playing had everything: crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power…soulful lyricism…unsentimental expressivity.”
Recipient of the prestigious 2018 Heidelberger Frühling Music Prize, Montero’s recent highlights include debuts with the San Francisco Symphony (Edward Gardner), New World Symphony (Michael Tilson Thomas), Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Tokyo (Aziz Shokhakimov), Orquesta de Valencia (Pablo Heras-Casado), and the Bournemouth Symphony (Carlos Miguel Prieto), the latter of which featured her as Artist-in-Residence for the 2019-2020 season.
Photo by Anders Brogaard
Ilya Itin
Ilya Itin has performed with many of the world’s great conductors, including Sir Simon Rattle, Neemi Jarvi, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Yakov Kreizberg, Vassily Sinaisky, Valery Polyansky, and Mikhail Pletnev performing as soloist with orchestras, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Tokyo Symphony, the National Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the China National Symphony, the Symphony Orchestra of India; the Mexico City Philharmonic; and the Rochester Philharmonic.
Born in Yekaterinburg, Russia, his piano studies began at the Sverdlovsk School for the Gifted with Natalia Litvinova. He went on to graduate from the Moscow Conservatory with the highest honors in 1990 working with legendary teacher Lev Naumov. Mr. Itin won his first major piano competition while at the Conservatory, taking second place in the 1990 Russian National Rachmaninov Competition. Soon after, he won top honors in the William Kapell Competition, followed by First Prize, and the Special Chopin Prize at the Casadesus Competition (Cleveland Competition), and the Best Performance of a Work of Mozart, Best Prokofiev Performance, and Third Prize at the Gina Bachauer Competition.
Ilya Itin is on the teaching faculties of the Musashino Academy in Tokyo, the Academy of the Miami International Piano Festival and the Golandsky Institute at Princeton University. He has also taught in the piano departments of the Juilliard School prep and college divisions, Peabody Conservatory, and the Graduate Program at CUNY. Ilya Itin resides in Tokyo, Japan, and New York City where he maintains a private teaching studio.
Danilo Pérez
As a solo artist and as a collaborator with jazz giants from Dizzy Gillespie to Wayne Shorter, for over three decades Grammy® Award Winning Panamanian Pianist-Composer Danilo Pérez has been lauded as one of the most creative forces in contemporary music. With Jazz as the anchoring foundation, Pérez’s Global Jazz music is a blend of Panamanian roots, Latin American folk music, West African rhythms, European impressionism – promoting music as a borderless and multidimensional bridge between all people.
Born in Panama in 1965, Pérez started his musical studies when he was three years old with his father, a bandleader and singer. By age 10, he was studying the European classical piano repertoire at the National Conservatory in Panama. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in electronics in Panama, he studied jazz composition at the prestigious Berklee College of Music. While still a student, he performed with Jon Hendricks, Terence Blanchard, Slide Hampton, Claudio Roditi and Paquito D’Rivera. Quickly established as a young master, he soon toured and/or recorded with artists such as Dizzy Gillespie United Nations Orchestra from 1989-1992, Jack DeJohnette, Steve Lacy, Lee Konitz, Charlie Haden, Michael Brecker, Joe Lovano, Tito Puente, Wynton Marsalis, Tom Harrell, Gary Burton, and Roy Haynes.
Pérez, who served as Goodwill Ambassador to UNICEF, has received a variety of awards for his musical achievements, activism and social work efforts. He is a recipient of the United States Fellowship 2018, and the 2009 Smithsonian Legacy Award. He currently serves as UNESCO Artist for Peace, Cultural Ambassador to the Republic of Panama, Founder and Artistic Director of the Panama Jazz Festival, and the Berklee Global Jazz Institute in Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
Thomas Bagwell
Thomas Bagwell’s “expressive pianistic powers” have established him as “an equal partner no less than revelatory” (The Washington Post) in song recital and chamber music on the international stage. His career has included critically acclaimed performances in New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and other major concert halls across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Japan. He has collaborated in recital with operatic superstars such as Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Marilyn Horne, Kristine Jepson, James Morris, Roberta Peters, Andrea Rost, and Frederica Von Stade.
Mr. Bagwell’s collaborations with renowned soprano Renée Fleming include a recital at the State Department for Secretary Hillary Clinton, the preparation of her acclaimed performances of Messiaen’s nine-part song cycle Poèmes pour Mi, appearances as Blanche DuBois in André Previn’s opera A Streetcar Named Desire, her recent recording of Berg and Wellesz with the Emerson String Quartet, and the world premiere of Anders Hillborg’s The Strand Settings with the New York Philharmonic.
Yegor Shevtsov
Yegor Shevtsov enjoys a multi-faceted career as a solo pianist, chamber musician, recording artist, collaborator, and educator. His performances have been singled out for their “Mozartean elegance,” “perfect lucidity” (New York Times), and “superb musicianship” (Miami Herald). His recent engagements have included appearances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York), Ojai Festival (California), National Theater in Taipei (Taiwan), New World Center (Florida), Weill Recital Hall (New York), Tokyo Bunka Kaikan (Japan), and Auditorio de Ciudad de León (Spain). Shevtsov’s recent CD release, “…avec un frisson,” featuring late piano music of Debussy and Boulez, was named by Rhapsody as one of the top 25 classical releases of 2013.
As a student and a Tanglewood Fellow, Yegor Shevtsov had the opportunity to be coached by some of the world’s finest musicians, such as Daniel Barenboim (at his Carnegie Hall Beethoven Sonata Workshop in 2003), Emmanuel Ax, Claude Franck, Garrick Ohlsson, James Levine, Nina Svetlanova, Ursula Oppens, Martin Katz, Jeffrey Swann, Edna Golandsky, Craig Rutenberg, Dawn Upshaw, Kristine Brewer, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Yegor Shevtsov is a dedicated educator; his piano and chamber music students have won many young artist competitions. He holds his doctoral degree from Manhattan School of Music.
Lisa Yui
Photo by Jo Liu
Described as “a musical phenomenon” (Pianiste), Yamaha Artist Lisa Yui enjoys a multifaceted musical career as pianist, lecturer, teacher, author, and musical director. Since making her concerto debut at the age of seven, Dr. Yui has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as a recitalist and soloist with orchestra. She is the top prizewinner of the Senigallia International Piano Competition in Italy, the Super Classics International Auditions in Tokyo and has twice been the recipient of a Canada Council Scholarship.
Lisa Yui has worked with such prominent orchestras as the Tokyo Symphony, Polish National Radio, Toronto Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, the Montreal Metropolitan Orchestra, and the Krakow State Philharmonic. Her performances have been broadcast on WQXR (New York), CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation) national radio, CJRT-FM (Ontario, Canada), and STV (Sapporo, Japan). She has performed at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum in Budapest, among other major concert venues around the world.
In 2005 Dr. Yui was chosen from over 1000 applicants as one of the few Canadian artists to participate in the World Exposition in Aichi, Japan, where she hosted in English, Japanese, and French. She performed a program of works by Liszt, Ravel, and Canadian composers Francois Morel and Colin McPhee.
Carles Marín
During his extensive international solo career, Carles Marín has performed at many outstanding festivals and venues including the Salzburg Festival (Mozarteum Grosser Saal and Wiener Saal), Concertgebauw in Amsterdam, Le Doelen in Rotterdam, Salle Cortot and Unesco in Paris, Salle Gotique in Brussels, Florence Festival, Seymour Center in Sydney, Teatro Nacional in Panama, Rafael Orozco Festival in Cordova, Manuel de Falla Auditorium in Granada, Juan March Foundation in Madrid, and the Echternatch-Luxembourg Festival.
Prize-winner in more than 40 piano competitions including those of the Academia Mozarteum and the Scarlatti Preis in Salzburg, Baltic in Poland, Panama City, Città di Marsala, Flame in Paris, Virtuoso Prize in Rotterdam, Yamaha Foundation of Europe, José Iturbi in Valencia, Manuel de Falla in Granada, Ibiza and Frechilla-Zuloaga. His famous “Piano Fire” CD (Nibius, 2016) received the Melómano de Oro award and was Ritmo CD of the month.
He has trained with such outstanding names as Joaquín Achúcarro and, more recently, Edna Golandsky. He has also been advised by Alicia de Larrocha and Zubin Mehta.
Seán Duggan
Pianist Sean Duggan is a monk of St. Joseph Abbey in Covington, Louisiana. He obtained his music degrees from Loyola University in New Orleans and Carnegie Mellon University.
In September 1983 he won first prize in the Johann Sebastian Bach International Competition for Pianists in Washington, D.C., and again in August 1991. Having a special affinity for the music of Bach, in 2000 he performed the complete cycle of Bach’s keyboard works eight times in various American and European cities. For seven years he hosted a weekly program on the New Orleans NPR station entitled “Bach on Sunday.” He is presently in the midst of recording the complete cycle of Bach’s keyboard (piano) music, which will comprise 24 CDs.
Duggan has performed with many orchestras including the Louisiana Philharmonic, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Leipzig Baroque Soloists, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, the American Chamber Orchestra, and the Pennsylvania
Sinfonia. From 2001 to 2004 he was a visiting professor of piano at the University of
Michigan. Currently he is associate professor of piano at SUNY at Fredonia. During the fall semester of 2008 he was also a guest professor of piano at Eastman School of Music.
Duggan has been a guest artist and adjudicator at the Chautauqua Institution for several summers, and is also a faculty member of the Golandsky Institute at Princeton, New Jersey. He continues to study the Taubman approach with Edna Golandsky in New York City.
Sylvie Courvoisier
Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a native of Switzerland, has earned just renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the downtown jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades. Few artists feel truly at ease in both concert halls and jazz clubs, playing improvised or composed music. But Courvoisier – “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise,” according to The New York Times – is as compelling when performing Stravinsky’s iconic Rite of Spring in league with flamenco dancer-choreographer Israel Galván and pianist Cory Smythe as she is when improvising with her own widely acclaimed jazz trio, featuring bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen.
Then there are her ear-opening collaborations with such avant-jazz luminaries as John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Ellery Eskelin, Susie Ibarra, Fred Frith, Andrew Cyrille, Mark Feldman, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley and Mary Halvorson.
In music as in life, Courvoisier crosses borders with a creative spirit and a free mind; her music-making is as playful as it is intense, as steeped in tradition as it is questing and intrepid. JazzTimes has said: “Courvoisier keeps you on the edge of your seat because it feels like the piano cannot contain her. Her careening solos seem to overwhelm and overflow the keyboard and keep spilling.”
Therese Milanovic
Therese is a passionate performer, educator, and advocate for musicians’ health. After nearly ten years of debilitating playing-related injuries, studying the Taubman Approach with Edna Golandsky and also John Bloomfield has offered her the possibility of pursuing her pathway in music to the fullest. Deeply studying and disseminating this body of knowledge has become her life’s work, not only for herself, but in bringing the Taubman Approach to Australia and developing the next generation of expert Taubman teachers. This will be the focus of her presentation at the forthcoming Golandsky Institute Virtual Summer Symposium.
Therese was the first Australian to become a Taubman Instructor in 2009, the focus of her PhD, and later became a Master level teacher and Associate Faculty with the Golandsky Institute (USA). She is the most experienced Taubman teacher in Australia, and makes this invaluable knowledge available to those at a distance through online lessons and her innovative Coach on Demand service, enabling access for both international and interstate students from Kazakhstan to Dubbo, alongside workshops, teacher training sessions, and lecture presentations.
As part of her advocacy for disseminating the Taubman work, Therese has been a Keynote Speaker for numerous national conferences, including Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference, ANZCA, Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare (ASPAH), and has also presented for Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, and several chapters of the Queensland Music Teachers’ Association (QMTA). Aside from presenting herself, Therese has facilitated numerous online workshops involving Golandsky Institute co-founders, overseen John Bloomfield’s four visits to Australia including coordinating a national weekend workshop and facilitating teaching schedules in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and has also arranged Sophie Till to visit Australia twice to present on the Taubman / Golandsky Approach for Strings, in combination with performing chamber recitals together. She is committed to her ongoing learning and artistic development through continued study with Edna Golandsky and John Bloomfield.
As a performer, Therese loves collaborating with other like-minded musicians. She has performed with Topology since 2009, including shows in the Netherlands, NYC, Belgium, Singapore and Indonesia, frequent national tours and festivals (www.topologymusic.com). Chamber music is also close to her heart. In addition to performing the well-known treasures of the repertoire, Therese strives to bring lesser known music to a wider audience, in particular new music and music by women composers with the Muses Trio, with whom she has commissioned numerous new works, and recorded for ABC Classic. (see www.musestrio.com). Otherwise, Therese spends her time playing turtles and garbage trucks with her small son, trying (unsuccessfully) to hide vegetables in his meals.
Student Accomplishments
Ms. Golandsky has also taught and coached gifted pianists who are students and graduates from major piano conservatories and music schools worldwide. Below are the accomplishments of some of her students over the last few years.
Ms. Golandsky has also taught and coached gifted pianists who are students and graduates from major piano conservatories and music schools worldwide. Below are the accomplishments of some of her students over the last few years.
Jeremy Chan: An injured Australian pianist, Jeremy worked with Ms. Golandsky while studying at Queens College of New York, and was then accepted to the Manhattan School of Music, followed by a fellowship at The Juilliard School. He was also one of the few pianists nationwide to be accepted to study at the summer Tanglewood Festival.
Juan Nicolas Morales: Originally from Colombia, Juan was the first pianist to receive a Fulbright Scholarship to obtain his MA from the Manhattan School of Music. He came to the US suffering from dystonia and studied with Ms. Golandsky for two years. He played brilliantly at his graduation recital and was subsequently accepted into the doctoral program at University of South Carolina.
Sean Yu: Sean started with Ms. Golandsky at the age of nine and studied with her for seven years. He developed a brilliant technique and was accepted to the New England Conservatory of Music.
Laura Jeon: Laura had been injured for years. After completing her doctorate at Seattle University, she began studying with Ms. Golandsky, developed a brilliant technique and is now performing completely free of symptoms.
Jin Jeon: Originally from Korea, Jin studied at the Conservatory of Music in Berlin. He developed physical and technical problems that made it very difficult to play. He came to New York to study with Ms. Golandsky and has been studying with her for the past eight years, during which time he resolved his problems, completed his degree, developed a virtuoso technique and is currently teaching and performing.
Hugo Bermudez-Ledesma: Hugo encountered severe shoulder problems while studying at the Conservatory of Music in Monterrey, Mexico and started studying with Ms. Golandsky at that time. He continued study with her after graduation and up until the present day, developing a brilliant technique. He now works with pianists as a Taubman teacher, has built a school to have beginning piano students learn correct technique and is actively promoting Taubman Approach principles throughout the Spanish speaking world via the internet.