Steinway Piano Competition Master Class in Kansas City!
Please join us for a Master Class with Dr. Albert Kim, piano professor at the University of Central Missouri, on Saturday, May 4th at 1:00PM at Schmitt Music Kansas City – free and open to the public!
On June 21, 22, and 23, Steinway & Sons and Schmitt Music will hold the second annual Steinway Junior Piano Competition, and this master class is a great learning opportunity for young pianists who plan to compete this summer! Dr. Albert Kim is a professor of piano at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, MO – An All-Steinway School. All are welcome to attend as Dr. Kim conducts a master class from 1PM to 3PM with three students performing in this year’s competition.
Seating is limited, so please let us know if you plan to attend. Call 913-663-4756, email us at steinway@schmittmusic.com, or CLICK HERE TO RSVP TODAY!
The 2019 Steinway Junior Piano Competition will take place at Schmitt Music Kansas City on Friday, June 21, Saturday, June 22, and Sunday, June 23 – CLICK HERE for details and register by May 1st!
American pianist Albert Kim has enthralled audiences throughout the United States and abroad with energetic and unconventional readings of the solo and chamber repertory. He gave his formal recital debuts at Weill Recital Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, and Birmingham Symphony Hall (U.K.) as a Carnegie Hall – European Concert Hall Organization Rising Star in 1999, followed by critically acclaimed chamber recitals at Ravinia, Caramoor, Weill Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as pianist of the former Kim-Jacobsen-Arron Trio. He has appeared as soloist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, Virginia Symphony, and Tenerife Symphony Orchestra and collaborated in performance with Charles Castleman, Griffin Campbell, Ensemble Signal, and the Eastman Virtuosi among many others. Among his festival credits he has performed as a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival (Finland), and Bravo! Colorado Music Festival, and as artist faculty at the Castleman Quartet Program and the Blue Lake Summer Arts Festival. He made his first public appearance at the age of ten, substituting for an ailing Vladimir Horowitz to give the inaugural performance, at Carnegie Hall, of the 500,000th Steinway piano.
A New Piano Collective artist, Dr. Kim appears annually at the San Francisco International Piano Festival, where he delivered a multimedia performance of Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata and the U.S. premiere of Graham Lynch’s White Book 2 in 2018. He has recorded or premiered the music of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Hilary Tann, and Robert Bradshaw, and collaborates regularly with composers in the U.S. and Europe. Mr. Kim’s unusual path has included an extended absence from the professional concert stage, during which he trained as a pilot and resumed work on numerous projects as a composer and arranger. His growing catalogue of transcriptions includes
solo transcriptions of Ravel’s La Valse and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and a seven-piece instrumental arrangement of Strauss’s Salomé in its entirety, premiered in 2014. He is the pianist of The TableTop Opera, an artistic collective that has received attention and critical praise for its multimedia performances at the Rochester Fringe Festival, including an ongoing collaboration with famed comic-book artist P. Craig Russell.
Mr. Kim holds a B.A. in music from Harvard and D.M.A. and M.M. from the Eastman School of Music, where he completed his studies with Natalya Antonova. He received his formative training from Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division. He is regularly invited to guest teach, with recent engagements at the Reinhardt University Piano Festival and Academy, UCM Piano Institute, Neskowin Chamber Music, Dakota Sky Academy, Dongfang Arts School (Shanghai), Castleman Quartet Program, Yellow Springs Piano Fest, Kansas City Federated Music Teachers, the University of Memphis, and Texas State University. Mr. Kim has served as assistant professor of piano at the University of Central Missouri since 2017. A passionate educator, he is dedicated to the premise that all music, whether created today or centuries ago, belongs to those who free themselves of tradition and seek their own voice through a total knowledge of their craft.
