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photo: Kathy Chapman |
Sergey Schepkin
piano
The Russian-American pianist Sergey Schepkin has performed to great acclaim across the globe, including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Celebrity Series of Boston, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, the LACMA and Maestro Series in Los Angeles, the Grand and Chamber Philharmonic Halls in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo, among many other venues and series.
Mr. Schepkin’s immense repertoire includes most important works of keyboard and chamber literature written over the past four hundred years. He is particularly fond of Romantic and Russian works. The New York Times deemed him “a Romantic firebrand” and “an estimable Brahmsian,” while The New York Sun proclaimed his performance of Mussorgsky's “Pictures at an Exhibition” at New York's Bargemusic one of the best performances of 2004. The Boston Globe declared Mr. Schepkin “an artist of uncommon, almost singular capability and integrity... [who] synthesizes the most diverse approaches and insights.” He has won particular praise for his performances and recordings of J.S. Bach, and was hailed by The New York Times as “a formidable Bach pianist . . . [who] plays with the passion and drama of a young Glenn Gould.”
Mr. Schepkin has performed with the St. Petersburg, Oslo, and Louisiana Philharmonics, the Norwegian Broadcasting Symphony, and the Boston Pops. A passionate chamber player, he has performed with many outstanding instrumentalists, including the Borromeo, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, New Zealand, and Vilnius string quartets; he frequently performs with the Boston Symphony members Lucia Lin and Owen Young. He was a founding member of the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston, and performed with that group from 1998 to 2002. An advocate of new music, Mr. Schepkin earned Sofia Gubaidulina's praise for his interpretation of her piano Chaconne, and has collaborated with or premiered works by Alan Fletcher, Michael Gandolfi, and the late Daniel Pinkham, as well as several American composers of a younger generation, including Christopher Trapani and Julia Carey.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sergey Schepkin studied piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Alexandra Zhukovsky, Grigory Sokolov, and Alexander Ikharev, graduating summa cum laude in 1985. After his permanent move to the United States in 1990, he studied with Russell Sherman at New England Conservatory in Boston, where he earned an Artist Diploma in 1992 and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1999. From 1994 to 1998, Mr. Schepkin coached with the late legendary French-American pianist Paul Doguereau. Boston has been his home since 1990; the Boston Phoenix once described him as “one of Boston's great treasures, a supremely intelligent pianist who plays Bach as well as anyone.” Mr. Schepkin is a faculty member of the New England Conservatory Division of Preparatory and Continuing Education; since 2003, he has also served as Associate Professor of Piano at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He has presented lectures-recitals and master classes at UCLA, the San Francisco Conservatory, New England Conservatory, Oberlin Conservatory, M.I.T., the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, and other institutions of higher learning.
Sergey Schepkin's awards include the first and Chopin prizes in the 1999 New Orleans International Piano Competition, top prizes in the 1988 Crown Princess Sonja and 1985 All-Russia piano competitions, first prize in the 1978 International Competition for Young Musicians in Prague, the 1995 and 1999 Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Awards, the 1993, 1995, and 1999 St. Botolph Club Foundation Grants, the 1993 Harvard Musical Association Award, and the 1992 Presser Foundation Award. In 2003, he was awarded the Maestro Foundation Genius Grant. His Bach Partitas recordings were nominated for the Indie Award in 1997 and 1998.
In November of 2009, Mr. Schepkin made his third trip to Japan, where he performed Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier II at the Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo, after having played that monumental work in New York, Boston, and Pittsburgh earlier in the fall. Most recent events included recitals at Boston's Steinert Recital Hall and at Harvard University’s Graduate School for Arts and Sciences. In the fall of 2010, he will play a recital and give a master class at the Rivers Conservatory in Weston, MA, and then make a return engagement in Japan. In the spring of 2011, he will perform a recital at the Maestro Foundation, Los Angeles, as well as the Chatham University in Pittsburgh, and present a master class at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University.
Sergey Schepkin is a Steinway Artist. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
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