2019 NMTA State Conference
October 17-18, 2019
Omaha, Nebraska
2019 Conference Schedule
2019 Conference Registration Form
**Special Note: In materials previously distributed, the hotel address was printed incorrectly. The CORRECT address is listed in the downloadable forms on this page and listed below.**
Conference Guests Artist
Alexander Kobrin
“He surrendered neither the smoothness nor the dynamic fluidity that the modern piano allows, and he gave his sense of fantasy free rein, and creating an almost confessional spirit .” — The New York Times
Called the “Van Cliburn of today” by the BBC, pianist Alexander Kobrin has placed himself at the forefront of today’s performing musicians. His prize winning performances have been praised for their brilliant technique, musicality, and emotional engagement with the audience. The New York Times has written that Mr. Kobrin was a “fastidious guide” to Schumann’s “otherworldly visions, pointing out hunters, flowers, haunted corners and friendly bowers, all captured in richly characterized vignettes.” “This was a performance that will be revered and remembered as a landmark of the regeneration of exceptional classical music in Central New York.”-critic wrote after Mr. Kobrin’s performance of Second Piano Concerto by Johannes Brahms with Syracuse Symphony in Syracuse,NY.
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, Belgrade Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra Verdi, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Moscow Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, Berliner Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Swedish Radio Symphony, Birmingham Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with such conductors as Mikhail Pletnev, Mikhail Jurovsky, Mark Elder, Vassiliy Sinaisky, James Conlon, Claus Peter Flor, Alexander Lazarev, Vassiliy Petrenko and Yuri Bashmet.
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 past performances have included recitals at Bass Hall for the Cliburn Series, the Washington Performing Arts Society, La Roque d’Antheron, the Ravinia Festival, the Beethoven Easter Festival, Busoni Festival , the renowned Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Festival Musique dans le Grésivaudan ,the International Keyboard Institute & Festival, annual concert tours in Japan, China and Taiwan.
Though widely acclaimed as a performer, Mr. Kobrin’s teaching has been an inspiration to many students through his passion for music. From 2003 to 2010 he served on the faculty of the Russian State Gnessin’s Academy of Music. In 2010 Alexander Kobrin was named the L. Rexford Distinguished Chair in Piano at the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, and since 2013 until 2017 has been a member of the celebrated Artist Faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School. In July 2017, Mr.Kobrin has joined the faculty of the renowned Eastman School of Music in Rochster,NY. Mr. Kobrin has also given masterclasses in Europe and Asia, the International Piano Series and at the Conservatories of Japan and China.
Mr. Kobrin has been a jury member for many international piano competitions, including the Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano,Hamamatsu International Piano Competion, the Blüthner International Piano Competition in Vienna, E-Competition in Fairbanks, AK and the Neuhaus International Piano Festival in Moscow.
Mr. Kobrin has released recordings on the Harmonia Mundi, Quartz, and Centaur labels, covering a wide swath of the piano literature. His Schumann album,released on Centaur Records has been included into top-5 albums of the year in 2015 by Fanfare Magazine. Gramophone Magazine raved about his Cliburn Competition release on Harmonia Mundi, writing that “in [Rachmaninoff’s] Second Sonata (played in the 1931 revision), despite fire-storms of virtuosity, there is always room for everything to tell and Kobrin achieves a hypnotic sense of the music’s dark necromancy.”
Mr. Kobrin was born in 1980 in Moscow. At the age of five, he was enrolled in the world-famous Gnessin Special School of Music after which he attended the prestigious Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. His teachers have included renowned professors Tatiana Zelikman and Lev Naumov.
Diane Hidy
Diane Hidy is a concert pianist, teacher, composer. She co-authored the method Piano Town with renowned pedagogue, Keith Snell. Her Attention Grabber Pieces are best sellers around the globe. She attended Juilliard and holds degrees from USC and Peabody Conservatory, where she studied with John Perry and Leon Fleisher. She teaches youth and adult students and provides practical advice for fellow teachers at her website, TeachWithDiane.com. Her helpful and humorous writing inspires teachers world-wide. She lives in San Francisco.
Charlie Albright
Hailed as “among the most gifted musicians of his generation” with a “dazzling natural keyboard affinity” who “made quite an impression” by the Washington Post, American pianist/composer/improviser Charlie Albright has been praised for his “jaw-dropping technique and virtuosity meshed with a distinctive musicality” by The New York Times, and his “extravagance that had showmanship but never felt cheap” with his “ease and smoothness that refuses to airbrush the music, but animates it from within” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and Gilmore Young Artist Award, Albright won the Ruhr Klavier Festival Young Artist Award presented by Marc-André Hamelin (Germany) and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. In addition to performing, Albright is sought after as a speaker, masterclass instructor, teacher, and competition judge. His debut commercial recording, Vivace, has sold thousands of copies worldwide and the first of a 3-part Schubert Series of live, all-Schubert recordings was released in 2017. Charlie Albright breaks the “classical” rules of music by connecting with audiences like no other. Through his music, speaking, and unique improvisations that bring music to life, he crosses all genres…and makes it fun.
Albright regularly appears at major concert halls, festivals, and with artists of all genres worldwide. In 2019, he was the guest artist at the Isaac Stern Auditorium main stage of Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Leon Botstein, and made his return appearances at the 2019 Bergen International Festival in Norway, where he performed a sold-out solo recital and was given the honor of performing the festival’s traditional yearly concert of the Grieg Piano Concerto at Grieg Concert Hall with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. His season includes an invitation to perform the Ye Xiaogang Starry Sky Concerto at the Opening Concert of the Inaugural 2019 Qingdao Ocean International Music Festival in China, and return performances at the Newport Music Festival.
He is a frequently returning guest artist with such orchestras as the BBC Concert Orchestra (14-concert tour with Maestro Keith Lockhart, chosen as one of the “Best of the BBC 2015”); the Alabama, Baltimore, Boston Pops, Buffalo, California, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Edmonton (Canada), Des Moines, Fort Smith, Houston, Kymi Sinfonietta (Finland), Lansing, Mobile, National Center for the Performing Arts (Beijing, China), Omaha, Phoenix, Seattle, San Francisco, Victoria (Canada), and West Michigan Symphony Orchestras. He has performed worldwide, including at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington, D.C.); Symphony Hall (Boston); the Salle Cortot (Paris, France); the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts (Miami); the Kumho Art Hall (Seoul, South Korea); the NCPA (Beijing); and Alice Tully Hall (Mostly Mozart Festival, New York).
Albright regularly collaborates with artists from all genres, including vocalist/conductor Bobby McFerrin and violinist Joshua Bell. He has collaborated five times with revered cellist Yo-Yo Ma: at the honorary degree ceremony at Harvard University for Senator Ted Kennedy; at a 10th anniversary remembrance of 9/11; at the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison; at the Aspen Institute’s Citizen Artistry conference in New York; and with the Silk Road Project.
Albright’s compositions and improvisations have been likened to “the great Romantic-era composer-pianists” by Classical Source and have been praised as “thrilling” by the DC Metro Theatre Arts. The Philadelphia Inquirer raved that he “brought the art of classical-music improvisation to a new level.”
A firm believer in education, Albright founded the Charlie Albright Scholarship and Charlie Albright Piano in collaboration with the Centralia College Foundation in his hometown. The Scholarship provides financial aid to music students, and money was raised to purchase and maintain a new 9-foot Steinway Piano for the college’s Corbet Hall.
Winner of the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts and named one of the “15 Most Interesting Seniors,” Albright was also named Artist-in-Residence for Harvard University’s Leverett House, a position last filled by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Albright’s numerous awards include First Prize in both Solo and Ensemble categories at the 2006 New York National Piano Competition; First Prize and all other awards offered at the 2006 Eastman International Piano Competition; Third Prize at the 2007 Hilton Head International Piano Competition; Semi-Finalist Award and Best Performance of a Work by Liszt in Stage I at the 2008 Sydney International Piano Competition; and the Vendome Virtuoso Prize and the Elizabeth Leonskaya Special Award at the 2009 Vendome Prize International Piano Competition.
Born in Centralia, Washington, Albright began piano lessons at the age of 3. He studied with Nancy Adsit and earned an Associate of Science degree at Centralia College while still in high school. He was the first classical pianist in the Harvard College/New England Conservatory 5-Year AB/MM Joint Program, completing a Bachelor’s Degree as an Economics major and Pre-Med student at Harvard, and a Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance at NEC, having studied with Wha-Kyung Byun. He graduated with the prestigious Artist Diploma (A.D.) from The Juilliard School, having studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky. Albright is an official Steinway Artist. For the latest information, please visit CharlieAlbright.com and Facebook.com/CharlieAlbrightPianist.
Bryan Stanley
Dr. Bryan Stanley (b. 1972), accomplished pianist-composer and collaborator, is published by Hal Leonard, Boosey & Hawkes, and G. Schirmer, specializing in arrangements and adaptations of music of Aaron Copland; as well as American folksong concert arrangements (Hal Leonard 2002). His original compositions for piano, concerto, vocal, and chamber groups have been performed with Caritas Symphonia of San Francisco, Siaulei Piano Duo Festival in Lithuania, Harpa Symphony Hall in Iceland, Riverton Utah Symphony Orchestra, University of Nebraska in Omaha and Kearney; St. Louis Community College Orchestra, Indiana University-Southeast, Simpson College, Park City Beethoven Festival, Utah Opera, Park City Community Church, Lewis University, and KBYU radio. Most recently, in January, tenor Kyle Stegall premiered his Three Songs on Poems of Carl Sandburg at UNO. His madrigal, “Orpheus and his Lute,” was performed with the University of Nebraska Chamber Singers in 2018. His Four Songs, musical settings of poetry by Kansas Poet Laureate Wyatt Townley, were featured at Waldorf University in 2017.
He performed his first piano concerto with the University of Oklahoma Chamber Orchestra in 2000; and his second concerto with Caritas Symphonia in San Francisco in 2016. His four-harp concerto was premiered at the Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle in 2011. In 2007, he was a featured pianist at the Gina Bachauer International Summer Piano Festival. In 1997 the Des Moines Metro Opera premiered his one-act chamber opera, Cask of Amontillado, the result of winning a national chamber opera competition. The premiere, which he conducted, was enthusiastically reviewed in Opera News magazine.
Dr. Stanley studied piano with Robert Larsen at Simpson College (BM); Joanne Baker at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (MM); composition with Carolyn Bremer and piano with Ed Gates at the University of Oklahoma (DMA), and Robert Spillman at the Aspen Summer Music Festival. Bryan teaches piano in West Omaha and frequently collaborates with Opera Omaha. He and his wife Kristín Jónína Taylor form Atlantic Piano Duo and concertize regularly across the country while the cats stay at home. Their one-year old son Magnús listens to a lot of piano music.
The conference will also feature presentations by NMTA members. Kristín Taylor, University of Nebraska-Omaha will present a session on Grieg’s Lyric Pieces; and Angela Miller-Niles, Wayne State College, will discuss using repertoire to incorporate world music into lessons. New to the conference this year will be a poster session featuring NMTA student members’ research and activity.
Lodging
Sonesta ES Suites Omaha
6990 Dodge Street
Omaha, NE 68132
Reservations
1-800-SONESTA
Special Rate:
Studio: $89.00*
2 bedroom: $129.00*
*Be sure to ask for the NMTA Conference Rate! (Code: NMTA)
Reservation cut-off date: September 25, 2019
After September 25, 2019 any rooms not booked will be cancelled and guests will book at the regular rate based on availability.