2021 International New Star Piano Competition Judges
Dr. Yu Xi Wang is swapping with Dr. Hsiang Tu due to maternity leave. Please check 2021 Etude Competition Judges bio for Dr. Wang
We’re honored to have Dr. Igor Lipinski, Dr. Hsiang Tu and Dr. Svetlana Belsky adjudicate our First International New Star Piano Competition this year. Their bios follow.
Dr. Igor Lipinski
Polish-born pianist Igor Lipinski made his orchestra debut with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra on NPR’s Performance Today and performed with Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra, Butler County Symphony Orchestra, Woodstock Mozart Festival Orchestra, Lakes Area Music Festival Orchestra, and Paderewski Symphony Orchestra at Chicago’s Symphony Center.
He maintains an active concert career in the U.S. with over 100 performances to date, including a live broadcast recital at Chicago’s premiere classical music station 98.7 WFMT and “33 Variations,” an award-winning theater play based on Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations.
At age 12, Lipinski won the Grand Prix and the First Prize at the Paderewski Competition for Young Pianists in Tuchów, Poland. At 17, he played the role of a pianist in Kazimierz Braun’s theatre play "Paderewski's Children" at the University at Buffalo. A year later, he graduated from the Paderewski Music High School in Tarnów, Poland where he studied piano with Jaroslaw Iwaneczko.
Lipinski earned his Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and Musical Arts and Master of Music in Piano Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester where he studied piano under the tutelage of Douglas Humpherys. As a teaching assistant of Vincent Lenti and Tony Caramia, he received Eastman’s Teaching Assistant Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Lipinski continued his graduate studies at Northwestern University Bienen School of Music earning his Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance under the tutelage of Alan Chow. Upon graduation from Northwestern, Lipinski joined the piano faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville as the Lecturer of Piano where he received the KMTA Teacher of the Year award. In Fall 2017, Lipinski joined the piano faculty at the University of Oklahoma as the Assistant Professor of Piano.
Lipinski’s students have won multiple awards including the University of Oklahoma Concerto Competition and the Oklahoma MTNA Young Artist Piano Competition. Lipinski has been an adjudicator for many national piano competitions including Texas Music Teachers Association State Conference in Houston and the Young Artist Piano Competition Finals of the 2020 MTNA National Conference in Chicago where he was also selected to present a conference session entitled “Reimagining The Piano Recital: Creative Ideas To Engage Your Audience.”
Lipinski’s research interests focus on the history of recital programming featured in his DMA dissertation “From Liszt to Victor Borge: A Legacy of Unique Piano Performances.” Recognized for his own creative programming, Lipinski unified two of his lifetime passions, classical music and magic, in a unique recital program “Piano Illusions.” Originally developed for his honors senior thesis at Eastman, Lipinski collaborated on the program with Teller of Las Vegas duo Penn & Teller and won the WQXR Classical Comedy Contest at Caroline’s on Broadway. In light of his success in New York, Lipinski presented “Piano Illusions” at renowned concert series and festivals including Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation in Salt Lake City and Musica del Cuore Concert Series in Hong Kong.
Highlights of recent concert seasons include recitals at the San Francisco International Piano Festival, College of Charleston International Piano Series in Charleston, South Carolina, The Evelyn Miller Young Pianists Series in Knoxville, Tennessee, and WNYC’s Greene Space in New York City.
After the halt of his concert tour caused by COVID-19 in 2020, he turned to recording, started his own record label Vanishing Records, and released his first album Alchemy available for streaming on Spotify and Apple Music. His most recent releases feature an EP of Ravel’s piano music and Masterpieces, a collection of piano music inspired by works of art. Upcoming 2021 releases feature an album of Liszt’s song transcriptions, an EP of piano music by Grażyna Bacewicz, and two books of Janácek’s On an Overgrown Path.
May 2021
Dr. Hsiang Tu
Praised by The New York Times for his "eloquent sensitivity" and The Boston Intelligencer for his "impeccable technique," pianist Hsiang Tu has graced the audience with his creative programming and wide range of repertoire. Dr. Tu is currently working on the complete cycle of piano solo works by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel and thematic recitals featuring animal-themed music and opus-one compositions. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, he debuted in New York at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center as the winner of The Juilliard School Concerto Competition, and he has performed in venues all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, National Museum Cardiff, and National Recital Hall in Taipei.
A prize winner at the New Orleans International Piano Competition, the Iowa International Piano Competition, and the American Paderewski Piano Competition, Dr. Tu has appeared with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, and the World Civic Orchestra, among others. He has given master classes at Cardiff University, University of Southern California, Penn State University, Loyola University New Orleans, Utah Valley University, and Colorado Mesa University.
Before being appointed as an Assistant Professor of Piano at Virginia Tech, Dr. Tu taught at the University of New Hampshire, Utah Valley University, and Snow College. He studied with Hung-Kuan Chen, Jerome Lowenthal, and HaeSun Paik, and holds a B.M. in Piano Performance from the University of Calgary and an M.M. and D.M.A. in Piano Performance from The Juilliard School.
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Dr. Svetlana Belsky
Critically acclaimed as “a passionate pianist and scholar,” Svetlana Belsky is a highly regarded recitalist, chamber pianist, and recording artist, noted for her remarkable rapport with audiences and stylistic versatility. Her recent CD, Busoni: The Late Works (Ravello, 2019), has received rave reviews from prestigious publications such as Fanfare, American Record Guide, Music Web International the Whole Note Magazine. She became a Steinway Artist in 2021.
A winner of many awards and competitions, Dr. Belsky is the recipient of the 2019 American Prize in Piano Performance and Silver Medals from the 2019 Global Music Awards for her EStrella Piano Duo CD, Tales from the East (2018) and her Stravinsky Rite of Spring CD (2014), which American Record Guide describes as “an extraordinary performance” and “astounding”. Her 2019 release of Myth and Romance CD, featuring works by Polish composers, recorded with distinguished violinist Marta Szlubowska, is already receiving plaudits for outstanding artistry, creativity and virtuoso technique by the duo. Recently, in commemoration of Women’s History Month 2019, Dr. Belsky was awarded the Outstanding Woman Award for Excellence in Music and Theater Arts from the Clerk of Cook County District Court.
Dr. Belsky has toured internationally in the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Italy, Canada, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and throughout the United States. Her performance credits include Carnegie Recital Hall, Kiev Philharmonic Hall, Dame Myra Hess Series, Music in the Loft, Chicago’s Cultural Center and Harris Theater, countless university concert series, live recitals on Chicago’s WFMT and New York’s WQXR, and guest appearances with the University of Chicago Symphony, Southern Illinois Symphony, Chicago Chamber Orchestra the Tutti Chamber Orchestra and the Lake County Symphony Orchestra.
Svetlana’s love for a wide variety of music has led her to play early music with original instrument ensembles, and receive awards for her interpretation of new American music. In recent years, she has introduced, in world and local premieres, compositions by no fewer than a dozen living composers. Her latest recording, Lux Internum, features Nocturns by Alan Kryszak and other Polish composers. She also appears regularly as part of the EStrella Piano Duo and Pianissimo!, an all-women four-piano ensemble. Dr. Belsky has recorded for Centaur, Ravello, and Sheridan Music Studio record labels, and has contributed CD Liner Notes for Russian Disc, Consonance and Triton Record labels.
In the 2012-2013 season Svetlana celebrated the centennial of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring with a nod to her Russian roots, with world-wide live and radio broadcast performances of the rarely-heard transcription of the work for solo piano by Vladimir Leyetchkiss. Another passion of Dr. Belsky’s is the music, writings and pedagogical legacy of Ferruccio Busoni. Her Doctoral Thesis (an annotated translation of Busoni as Pianist by the renowned Russian musicologist Grigori Kogan), was published by the University of Rochester Press in January of 2010, to great reviews, and was nominated for the prestigious Claude V. Palisca Award (for Outstanding Translation) by the American Musicological Society. Ms. Belsky’s lecture-recitals have helped to introduce wide audiences to Busoni’s music, and her first CD of Busoni’s Piano Transcriptions (along with her other recordings) has been heard on radio stations around the world. According to a recent review, Belsky “has some claim to call herself Ms. Bach-Busoni”.
As an in-demand adjudicator, Dr. Belsky has been on the juries of countless local, national and international competitions, including the George Gershwin International Competition (NY), Taiwan-Asia Piano Open Competition (Taiwan), Chicago Amateur Piano Competition, Konkurs Pianistyczny im. Ludwika Stafanskiego (L. Stefanski International Piano Competition) (Poland), and the Berliner International Competition. She is also in great demand as a lecturer on the subjects of piano pedagogy, masterclass guest teacher, and has been an invited guest scholar on the BBC Radio, discussing the works of Ferruccio Busoni.
Dr. Belsky's has served as the Director of the Piano Program at the University of Chicago for fifteen years, teaching students from four continents, guiding numerous students to victories in competitions for professionals and amateurs alike.
Born in the former Soviet Union, Svetlana Belsky was trained mostly in the United States. After immigrating to America, Belsky studied with Emilio Del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago. She received her Bachelor of Music Summa cum Laude and Master Degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Ann Schein, a student of the legendary Arthur Rubinstein. Later, she earned her Doctorate in Performance at the Manhattan School of Music, while working under Mme. Nina Svetlanova, an heir to the tradition of Heinrich Neuhaus. She has also been privileged to coach with Leon Fleisher, Menahem Pressler, Phil Levin (harpsichord) and other great artists.