Our Jury
Michael Lewin, jury chair, is one of America’s most foremost concert pianists, winning over audiences in 30 countries with playing of “majestic power and searing emotion.” (The London Times). His career was launched with top prizes in the Franz Liszt International Competition, the American Pianists Association Award and the William Kapell International Piano Competition. His recordings have won a Grammy Award and a Roundglass Music Award.
He has appeared as orchestral soloist with the Netherlands Philharmonic, Cairo Symphony, China National Radio Orchestra, Bucharest Philharmonic, Youth Orchestra of the Americas, State Symphony of Greece, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Phoenix, Indianapolis, Miami, North Carolina, West Virginia, Nevada, New Orleans, Colorado, Guadalajara, and Puerto Rico Symphonies. Solo appearances include New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Taiwan’s National Concert Hall, Hong Kong’s City Hall Theatre, Holland’s Muziekcentrum, Moscow’s Great Hall, the Athens Megaron, the National Gallery of Art, the Newport, Ravinia and Spoleto Festivals and PBS Television. His extensive repertoire includes over 40 piano concertos, with particular interest in the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy and American and Latin American composers.
Mr. Lewin’s award-winning discography on Sono Luminus, Naxos and Centaur includes a pair of acclaimed Debussy recordings entitled “Beau Soir” and “Starry Night”, the complete piano music of Charles T. Griffes, Scarlatti Sonatas Vol. 2 for Naxos, “Michael Lewin plays Liszt,” “A Russian Piano Recital”, “Bamboula!” piano music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, “Piano Phantoms,” “If I Were a Bird” and the 4 Violin Sonatas by William Bolcom with Irina Muresanu.
Michael Lewin is Professor and Head of Piano at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Classical Music Director for Ethos Music in China. He gives master classes worldwide, directs the Boston Conservatory Piano Masters Series and has mentored many prize-winning pianists. He is a Juilliard School graduate and a Steinway Artist. His own teachers includedLeon Fleisher, Yvonne Lefebure, Adele Marcus and Irwin Freundlich.
www.michaellewin.com
Jonathan Bass appears frequently throughout the United States as soloist and chamber musician. He has performed with numerous orchestras, including the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall, and the North Carolina Symphony at the Appalachian Summer Music Festival. He has been featured on many radio programs throughout the country, including NPR’s "Performance Today". His solo and chamber music recordings have received high acclaim from Gramophone Magazine. A Steinway Artist, Bass gave his New York debut at Weill Recital Hall as the First Prize winner in the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition (1993). He performs frequently at Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall in Boston, and at Tanglewood. Internationally, he has performed in China, Israel, Japan, Poland, Lithuania, Spain, and Russia.
Collaborative highlights include multiple guest appearances with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and recitals with violinist Joseph Silverstein. He also partners with his wife, BSO violinist Tatiana Dimitriades, in the Boston Duo. For more than 20 years, as the pianist and a founding member of the Walden Chamber Players, he performed on a variety of chamber music series and residencies across the United States and Canada.
Among the awards he has received are the First Prize in the American Pianists Association Beethoven Fellowship Competition (1989), First Prize in the American National Chopin Competition (1984), First Prize in the National Arts Club Competition (1983), Second Prize in the Washington International Competition (1993), Second Prize in the Young Keyboard Artists Competition (1983), and the Bronze Medal and Mozart Prize at the Robert Casadesus International Piano Competition (1987).
A graduate of the Juilliard School, Mr. Bass holds a Doctor of Music degree from the Indiana University School of Music. He is Professor of Piano at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where he has been on the faculty since 1993 and Chair of the Piano Department from 2008 to 2015. He was also Chair of the Piano Department at Boston University from 2006 to 2008. In addition, has been on the piano faculty of the Preparatory School of New England Conservatory since 1994, and he also serves on the faculty of the Walnut Hill School. His students have won many competition prizes, and he has given numerous master classes throughout the country.
Praised for her “thrilling, inspirational performance” (Florida Sun-Sentinel) and “elegance of line, leaping energy” (San Jose Mercury News), pianist Yukiko Sekino has forged a career that encompasses a wide range of interests. A soloist noted for her performances of Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin, she frequently collaborates in chamber music and performs some of the most challenging twentieth and twenty-first century works.
Sekino is the Gold Medalist of the 2006 International Russian Music Piano Competition and a 2010 winner of the S&R Foundation’s Washington Award. As the winner of the Mu Phi Epsilon International Competition, she has toured within the United States in recitals, masterclasses, and concerto performances. Additional honors include Tanglewood Music Center’s Jackson Prize and the JAA Music Award in New York. She made a concerto debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at age sixteen, and has since performed with the New World Symphony, Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, and Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra. Recent recitals include those at Jordan Hall in Boston, Overtures Series in Washington, D.C., Dame Myra Hess Concerts in Chicago, Hitomi Memorial Hall in Tokyo, Japan, and Northeast Asia International Piano Festival in China.
An avid collaborative artist and a new music performer, Sekino was the pianist of the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas from 2005 to 2008.
Sekino is a graduate of Harvard University and the Juilliard School. Her teachers include Gilbert Kalish, Seymour Lipkin, Robert Levin, and Eda Shlyam. Currently based in Boston, she teaches piano at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the New England Conservatory Prep School. She has given masterclasses in the United States and China, and has served as a summer guest artist and faculty at East Carolina Piano Festival and Atlantic Music Festival.
Hugh Hinton has performed widely as a concerto soloist, in recitals, and as a chamber musician, with a special interest in modern and contemporary music. He performed the world premiere of Chinary Ung’s Triple Concerto with the Phoenix, New Hampshire, and Honolulu Symphonies. He also performed the premiere of Bernard Rands’s Triple Concerto with the Florida Philharmonic, and performed and recorded the work with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, released on Albany Records.
Hinton has been a member of the contemporary music group Core Ensemble since its founding in 1993. Core Ensemble has performed at universities nationwide and in Russia, Ukraine, and Australia. Hinton was a winner of the United States Information Agency Artistic Ambassador competition, resulting in concerts and residencies throughout the Middle East. Hinton has appeared at many summer music festivals, including performances at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall, and at the Monadnock Festival in New Hampshire, where he performed Elliott Carter’s Piano Quintet. He has performed widely in Boston and New England, including performances at NEC’s Jordan Hall, Longy’s Pickman Hall, and at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. He has been heard on WGBH radio in Boston, and his performances have been broadcast internationally on “Art of the States.” His many recordings of contemporary and chamber music can be found on the Naxos, Etcetera, CRI, Newport Classics, and MMC labels.
Hinton earned his Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and Master’s and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from New England Conservatory, where his piano teachers included Russell Sherman, Wha-Kyung Byun, Lev Vlassenko, and Mykola Suk. A committed teacher, he currently serves as director of campus music activities at Merrimack College and instructor of piano at the Longy School of Music of Bard College.
Isabella Li is a pianist, educator, lecturer, and masterclass presenter with nearly three decades of teaching experience at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School and Expanded Education Division. She is also a frequent juror for national and international piano competitions.
Li made her solo and orchestral debut at age eight and has since performed across Asia and North America, including in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, and New York. Her appearances include major venues such as Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Victoria Concert Hall in Singapore, Beijing Concert Hall, and Pollack Hall in Montreal. In addition to her solo work, she is an active collaborative pianist, performing with singers and chamber ensembles.
A dedicated and sought-after teacher, Li emphasizes both technical excellence and artistic imagination. Her students have won top prizes in prestigious competitions, including the Kaufman Music Center International Youth Piano Competition, the Gina Bachauer International Junior and Young Artists Piano Competitions, the Steinway Piano Competitions, MTNA Piano Competitions, and the Chopin Competition for Young Pianists. Many have continued their studies at leading institutions such as The Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory, the Yale School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and the Peabody Institute.
Li holds a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and a Master’s degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from Westminster Choir College. She also pursued advanced pedagogical studies at The New School for Music Study in Princeton. Her principal teachers include José Ramos-Santana, Phyllis Lehrer, Louise Goss, Fan Da Lei, and Qing Hua Wang, and she was mentored by renowned pedagogue Frances Clark.
An active presenter, Li has given lectures and masterclasses in person and online, including at the 2024 MTNA National Conference. During the pandemic, she founded Musicale, an online platform connecting pianists worldwide through educational events. In recent years, she has increasingly focused on working with adult amateur pianists.