Competition Jury
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PIOTR GAJEWSKI
CHAIR OF THE JURY
“Immensely talented and insightful conductor, whose standards, taste and sensitivity are impeccable,” raves The Washington Post. Piotr Gajewski, a student and disciple of the late Leonard Bernstein, continues to thrill audiences all over the world with inspiring performances of great music. “His courtly, conservative movements matched the music’s mood. A flick of the finger, and a fanfare sounded. He held up his palm, and the musicians quieted. It was like watching a race car in the hands of a good driver,” reports The Buffalo News.
Maestro Gajewski has one foot in the United States, as music director & conductor of the National Philharmonic at the Music Center at Strathmore (metropolitan Washington, DC), and the other in Europe, as a frequent guest conductor in his native Poland. His immense repertoire, most of it conducted without a score, amazes critics and audiences alike.
He is one of a select group of American conductors equally at home in nearly all musical genres. A recent season saw him conduct Bach at the Northwest Bach Festival, Prokofiev with the South Florida Symphony, and Copland in Jelenia Gora, Poland. While Gajewski freely admits that Mozart is perhaps his favorite composer, he ventures as far as the music of ABBA, Barry Manilow and beyond at pops concerts, and has also led several dozen world premieres, including a recent one of the opera Lost Childhood by the American composer Janis Hamer.
A committed arts educator, Maestro Gajewski is the muscle behind the National Philharmonic’s groundbreaking “All Kids, All Free, All The Time” initiative, as well as the creation of summer institutes for young string players and singers, masterclasses with esteemed visiting artists, and a concerto competition for high-school students. Working with the local school system, Gajewski also established annual concerts for all second-grade students in Maryland’s Montgomery County–some 12,000 each year.
In Poland Gajewski has appeared with the Warsaw, Wroclaw, Krakow and Silesian philharmonics, among others. Since 2007, he has regularly served as the only American on the jury of the prestigious Grzegorz Fitelberg International Competition for Conductors.
Gajewski began studying piano at age four. After emigrating to the United States, he continued his studies in the Preparatory Division of New England Conservatory, at Carleton College in Minnesota, and at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he earned B.M. and M.M. degrees in orchestral conducting. His conducting mentors, in addition to Bernstein–with whom he studied at the Tanglewood Music Center on a Leonard Bernstein Conducting Fellowship–include such luminaries as Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Gunther Schuller, and Maurice Abravanel.
Maestro Gajewski’s many honors include Poland’s Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit, bestowed on him by the former president of Poland, and a prize at New York’s Leopold Stokowski Conducting Competition. A true Renaissance man, Gajewski continues to play competitive soccer, holds a law degree and a license to practice law in two states, and from 2007 to 2011 served on the City Council in his hometown of Rockville, Maryland. Piotr Gajewski is represented worldwide by Sciolino Artist Management samnyc.us
ALEXANDER KOBRIN
In the 2019-2020 season Mr. Kobrin will be making his Carnegie Hall debut as well as concluding his Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas project for WETA radio in Washington DC. His new Schubert and Hindemith CDs were released in 2019 on Centaur and Quartz labels.
In 2005, Mr. Kobrin was awarded the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medal at the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, TX. His numerous successes in competitions also include top prizes at the Busoni International Piano Competition (First Prize), Hamamatsu International Piano Competition (Top Prize), Scottish International Piano Competition in Glasgow (First Prize)
Mr. Kobrin has performed with many of the world’s great orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra Verdi, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Moscow Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, Berliner Symphony, Swedish Radio Symphony, Birmingham Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with renowned conductors as Mikhail Pletnev, Mikhail Jurovsky,Sir Mark Elder, Vassiliy Sinaisky, James Conlon, Claus Peter Flor, Alexander Lazarev, Vassiliy Petrenko, Yuri Bashmet and many others.
He has appeared in recital at major halls worldwide, including the Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the Kennedy Centre in Washington, Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, Louvre Auditorium,Salle Gaveau and Salle Cortot in Paris, Munich Herkulesaal and Berliner Filarmonia Hall in Germany, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, Sheung Wan Civic Centre in Hong Kong, as well as Sala Verdi in Milan and many others. Other performances have included appearances at La Roque d’Antheron, the Ravinia Festival,Ruhr Klavier Festival, the Beethoven, Busoni,Chautauqua and International Keyboard festival in NYC. Annual concert tours include performances and masterclasses in major conservatories in Asia, Europe and USA.
Before joining Eastman School of Music Alexander Kobrin was on the faculty of Gnessins State Academy of Music in Moscow, Schwob School of Music in Columbus, GA and in New York University. Mr. Kobrin regularly serves in the jury of international piano competitions, including Busoni, Hamamatsu, Rosalyn Tureck, Neuhaus and others.
Mr. Kobrin has released recordings on the Harmonia Mundi, Quartz, and Centaur labels, covering a wide swath of the piano literature to crictical acclaim including “critic’s choice” awards in Gramophone and Fanfare magazines.
Mr. Kobrin was born in 1980 in Moscow, Russia. He is a graduate of Gnessins Special Music School and Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory of professors Tatiana Zelikman and Lev Naumov studios.
EWA POBŁOCKA
Ewa Pobłocka is a prize-winner of the 10th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw (1980), where she also won the Polish Radio prize for the best performance of mazurkas. She studied at Gdańsk Music Academy under Zbigniew Śliwiński and Jerzy Sulikowski, graduating with honours in 1981. She completed post- graduate studies with Conrad Hansen in Hamburg (1982) and benefitted from consultation with Jadwiga Sukiennicka, Rudolf Kerer, Tatiana Nikolaieva and Martha Argerich. She won First Prize in the International Viotti Music Competition in Vercelli (1977) and the gold medal in the International Festival of Young Laureates in Bordeaux (1979).
Ewa Pobłocka has performed throughout Europe and the Americas, as well as in China, Indonesia, the RSA, Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Australia, in such venues as the Herkules-Saal in Munich, Musikhalle in Hamburg, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall, Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, Kyoi Hall in Tokyo, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, Barbican Centre and Wigmore Hall in London, Musikverein in Vienna, Lincoln Center in New York, Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto and Sala Cecília Meireles in Rio De Janeiro, among others. She has played as a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bayerischers Rundfunkorchester, Sinfonia Varsovia and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and has repeatedly toured as a Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra soloist under the baton of Kazimierz Kord and Antoni Wit. She is an accomplished chamber musician and has performed with the Silesian Quartet as well as with many singers from Poland and abroad. She has given numerous first performances and made world premiere recordings of works by Polish contemporary composers, including Andrzej Panufnik, Witold Lutosławski (first Polish recording of the Piano Concerto with the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the composer's baton), Paweł Szymański and Paweł Mykietyn.
She has worked with European radio stations and recorded more than 50 discs (for Polskie Nagrania, Deutsche Grammophon, CD Accord and Bearton, among others). Many of her recordings have won prizes and critical acclaim, just to mention two Fryderyk statuettes (both in 1998), two Record of the Year titles awarded by the 'Studio' Magazine (in 1996 and 1998), the John Field Medal for the recording of his complete Nocturnes. Her last album with the 1st book of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier by Johann Sebastian Bach (NIFC, 2018) has been awarded as recording of the month by 'Gramophone' Magazine and received special commendation in 'The Record Geijutsu'.
Pobłocka is a distinguished pedagogue. As well as teaching piano at Bydgoszcz Music Academy, she is also a guest teacher at the Geidai University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo and Nagoya. She has given numerous master classes in Canada, The United States, Vietnam, Japan, Mongolia, Korea, China, Ireland, Norway, Poland and Belgium, among others. She has been a jury member of many international piano competitions, as Piano Competition in Pretoria, the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw (on modern and period instruments), the Esther Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition or the International Piano Competition in Hamamatsu.
She has a passion for performing on period instruments from the Romantic Era. She frequently records, performs and gives master classes on the pianos such as Erard and Pleyel. She has been a jury member of the 1st International Chopin Piano Competition on Period Instruments which took place in September 2018 in Warsaw.
Preselection Jury
Photo Credit Lisa Marie Mazzucco
MARTIN LABAZEVITCH
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Praised by critics in Europe and the United States for his lyricism, virtuosity and an intensity of performance, pianist Martin Labazevitch appeared in many concert halls and festivals in Poland, Ukraine, Finland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Israel, Japan, South Korea and the United States. He is a recipient of many awards and recognitions in piano competitions in the U.S., Spain and Japan as well as recipient of the Honorary Ambassador Award in Stalowa Wola, Poland, Rina Menashe Award in Israel, Kosciuszko Foundation Award in New York as well as the Harold Bauer Award for the most promising pianist at the Manhattan School of Music.
Born in Poland, Mr. Labazevitch studied at the Odessa Conservatory in Ukraine, with Anatoly Kardashev, before immigrating to the United States, and obtaining scholarship to study at the Manhattan School of Music with Mme Nina Svetlanova and later with Cuban-American virtuoso Horacio Gutierrez - whom he considers his greatest inspiration. Currently, he is pursuing his doctoral studies with Jose Ramos Santana in Washington DC. He has worked with such renowned artists as Dmitri Bashkirov, Lazar Berman, Isidore Cohen, Bella Davidovich, Philippe Entremont, Stephen Hough, Ruth Laredo, Nikolai Petrov, and Earl Wild. He has also collaborated with contemporary composers such as Richard Danielpour, Jan Radzynski, Haskel Small, and Lukas Foss.
His performances have been broadcast on radio stations throughout the U.S. such as WQXR, WWFM, and WFMT in New York, WFMT in Chicago as well as classical radio stations in Poland and Lithuania. Mr. Labazevitch has been a soloist with leading orchestras in Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Japan, and the United States. As a chamber musician, he is a founding member of the Paderewski Trio, an all-Polish ensemble, which for the entirety of its existence had been coached by the late Isidore Cohen - member of the Juilliard String Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio. Paderewski Trio’s debut recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall was praised by Strad Magazine as “…exuberant, multi-faceted, …gripping from first note to last.”
Highlights of the most recent seasons include performances with the Beethoven Academy Orchestra, Rzeszow Philharmonic and Lutoslawski Chamber Orchestra in Poland, performances at the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall and with the Vilnius String Quartet in Lithuania, recital tour in Spain with his duo partner, cellist Rafal Jezierski, performance at the Tedmed conference at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, performances at the Weill Recital Hall in New York as the winner of the La Gesse Foundation auditions, and recital at the Dame Myra Hess series in Chicago.
In 2015, Mr. Labazevitch released his first commercial recording on Delos Music label, to very enthusiastic reviews in Poland, France, Germany and the United States. Fanfare Magazine wrote: “His way with Chopin is fluid and convincing. He plays with a superb control of rubato and has the most beautiful way of melting a phrase.” The American Record Guide wrote: “Pianist Labazevitch injects more fire into the two concerto works, rushing the tempos in some passagework to build excitement; orchestra and conductor gamely, calmly follow his lead. Labazevitch is excellent.” ConcertoNet wrote, “…he pleasantly refrains from overtaxing Chopin’s conclusive Allegro vivace with shimmering grandeur and eloquent precision that could even rival that of Arthur Rubinstein.”
Mr Labazevitch is the co-artistic director of the Puerto Rico International Piano Festival in San Juan, serves on the board of directors of the Rosalyn Tureck International Bach Competition in New York City and is the founder and artistic director of the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Piano Competition in Washington DC.
Enthusiastic educator, Mr. Labazevitch shares passion for teaching with his students at the Levine School of Music in Washington DC.
Photo Credit Henry J Fair
GOLDA VAINBERG-TATZ
Hailed as “a pianist with wonderful clear touch” (The New York Times), a “fascinating interpreter” (Tagblatt, Germany), and an “artist of depth and virtuosity” (The Times Argus, USA), Golda Vainberg-Tatz received her musical education in her native Lithuania at the Čiurlionis School of Art, Israel’s Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University, Manhattan School of Music, and The Juilliard School in New York.
Ms. Vainberg-Tatz was a guest artist at the Mozarteum Festival in Salzburg, the Vilnius Festival in Lithuania, the St. Petersburg Palaces Festival in Russia, the Puigcerda Music Festival in Spain, the International Academy in Garfagniana, Italy, the Shanghai Conservatory International Festival, and the Shanghai Himalayas International Piano Festival, where performed the Mozart Double Piano Concerto with Andre-Michel Schub and the Shanghai Philharmonic.
She performed with the Lithuanian National Symphony, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, St. Kristoforas Chamber Orchestra, the Kaunas Symphony in Lithuania, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra in Moscow, the Ann Arbor Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony in USA among others.
Her prizes and awards include first prize in the Lithuanian State Competition for Young Pianists, full scholarships with distinction from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, Maurice Claremont prestigious awards in Israel, top prizes at the Young Keyboard Artists Competition, the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati, the Frinna Awerbuch International Competition in New York, the Prix du Disque from the French Piano Institute in Paris, and the Palm Beach Invitational International Competition.
Among her mentors: Mindru Katz, Emanuel Krasovsky, Bella Davidovich, Nina Svetlanova, and Rosalyn Tureck.
Ms. Vainberg-Tatz is an associate faculty member at The Juilliard School, a faculty member at the Pre-College Division at MSM, associate faculty at Columbia University, and on the faculties of the Young Artist Program at Kaufman Center in New York, Morningside Music Bridge International Summer Festival, Puerto Rico International Piano Festival.
Among her recordings: Mozart piano concertos with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Schumann recital on 3D label, France (to highest acclaim in Fanfare and American Record Guide), Moisei Vainberg Piano Quintet with the Vilnius String Quartet (Delos, USA).
In 2003, she was appointed by Mme. Rosalyn Tureck to serve as director of the Tureck International Bach Competition in New York. Golda Vainberg-Tatz is a Steinway Artist.
NINA SVETLANOVA
Nina Svetlanova is a Russian-American concert pianist and educator. She became a naturalized US citizen in 1983. She has been a professor of piano at New York's Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College of Music since the late 1970s and is a highly sought-after pedagogue, and many of her students are well-known pianists and international competition winners. Before her teaching career, she was known as an excellent concert pianist and collaborative artist, being the main pianist to work with famous Armenian mezzo-soprano Zara Dolukhanova.Svetlanova graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Heinrich Neuhaus, who she studied with from the age of 16 to 23 (1948–1955), during a seven-year period. Prior to that she had been a student of Grigory Kogan and Sofia Kogan at the Gnesin Music College, where she studied since the age of five (1937–1948).Upon graduation from Moscow Conservatory (class of 1955), she became Opera Konzertmeister (opera coach) in the famous Bolshoi Theatre. Later she became a pianist in the official roster of the Moscow Philharmonic Concert Association, called Moskonzert, which was the main bureau responsible for all concerts in the USSR. As a Moskonzert pianist Svetlanova toured the whole world playing with all kinds of instrumentalists and ensembles, and working closely with Zara Dolukhanova. She was once married to famous conductor Evgeny Svetlanov. She moved to New York City in 1975.