Piano soloist, collaborator and educator Liza Stepanova will perform a concert as part of the Bucknell Piano Series on Monday, Feb. 4, at 7:30 p.m. in the Rooke Recital Hall, located in the Sigfried Weis Music Building. This performance is free and open to the public.
Praised by The New York Times for her “thoughtful musicality” and “fleet-fingered panache,” she is currently an assistant professor of piano at the University of Georgia, Hugh Hodgson School of Music. She also is a founding member of Trio Lysander.
Stepanova has performed extensively in Europe, most recently, as a soloist with the Southwest-German Philharmonic and in chamber music performances at the Berlin Museum of Musical Instruments and Belgrade’s Kolarac Hall. In the United States, she has appeared in Weill and Zankel Recital Halls at Carnegie; Alice Tully Hall, Merkin and Steinway halls in New York City; at the Kennedy Center and The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.; and live on WQXR New York, WFMT Chicago, and WETA Washington. Stepanova has twice been a soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra led by James DePreist and Nicholas McGegan and was a top prizewinner at the Liszt-Garrison, Juilliard Concerto, Steinway, and Ettlingen competitions.
As a member of the Lysander Piano Trio, she won the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Competition and received the Grand Prize at the 2011 Coleman Competition. The Trio gave its Kaufman Center and Weill Hall recital debuts in 2014 to enthusiastic reviews, has commissioned two world premieres, and recently released its debut CD, After A Dream, which garnered positive reviews from The New York Times’s Classical Playlist, WQXR, and Minnesota Public Radio. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at international festivals at Castleton, La Jolla, Music@Menlo, Mostly Mozart, Copenhagen (Denmark), and Davos (Switzerland).
Stepanova just released her first solo piano CD, recorded in New York City with Grammy Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. The recording features music from Bach to Ligeti that was inspired by visual art.
She received her DMA from The Juilliard School with a Richard F. French Award for outstanding doctoral work and is previously a graduate of the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin, Germany. She also taught at The Juilliard School and Smith College.
Each year, the Bucknell Piano Series features leading pianists from around the U.S. and abroad. Both rising younger artists and distinguished veterans present concert programs highlighting different musical idioms and specialties ranging from classical piano repertory and contemporary music performed on the modern piano, to performances on period instruments. During their residency on campus, the guest artists give masterclasses and lead workshops, providing Bucknell students with an important outside perspective that amplifies their musical training.