Our distinguished jury members are as following
Dr. Sha Wang, Artistic Director
Dr. Soyoung Jung, Member of the Jury (pre-college) winner of the 2018 Pittsburgh International Piano Competition
A signed Yamaha Artist, tenured professor of piano, Dr. Sha Wang enjoys a career as an active concert pianist, a professor of music, a clinian and adjudicator, as well as a scholar in music theory. At the age 19, Ms. Wang was the winner of the 16th International Young Artist Piano Competition, Washington, D.C. Since then, she has advanced into competitions such as the Jose Iturbi International Music Competition, Hilton-Head International Piano Competition and the Honens International Piano Competition. She is the first prize winner at the Long Beach Mozart Festival Concerto Competition, the grand prize winner of the Pittsburgh Concert Society Competition, the 2nd prize winner of the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition, and the alternate finalist at the Seattle International Piano Competition.
Dr. Wang has been invited to join the judging panel of The New York International Young Artist Competition in 2017. She will be performing at the Carnegie Hall in NYC as a guest artist for the event.
Dr. Wang has appeared on WFMT, Chicago, WQED, Pittsburgh, television stations in China and other parts of the world. She performed at the Kosciuszko Foundation Auditorium in NYC and was also the featured soloist at the Bank of America-Dame Myra Hess Concert Series at the Chicago Cultural Center. She has been the guest soloist for the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra and Pasadena Pops Orchestra and performed at venues such as the Descanso Gardens in La Cañada and the Richard Nixon’s Library and Museum in Yorba Linda. Her New York debut was at the Peter Norton Symphony Space in Manhattan. She has appeared on the stages of Aspen Music Festival and School, Interlochen Arts Academy, and other major summer festivals throughout the country. As a collaborative pianist, she has performed with artists, such as pianist Lang Lang, violinist Kun Dong (Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra), soprano Tamara Wilson (Houston Opera) and the members of Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She has performed for former U.S. President Ford, and has been a performing artist for the Steinway Society of Western Pennsylvania.
Dr. Wang is also a passionate new music promoter. She has premiered compositions of most current composers. Her active participation in new music festivals, such as Music X and Grandin Music Festival, gave her the opportunities to work with composers such as Joel Hoffman, Martin Bresnick, Kaija Saariaho, and Michael Torke.
Dr. Wang is a frequent clinician and adjudicator for State and National competitions. She is also invited to give masterclasses at many institutions both in the United States and Asia.
Ms. Wang holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, where she became the youngest doctoral graduate from the Conservatory. Her teachers include Karen Knecht, John Perry, Richard Fields, and Frank Weinstock. Wang has been on faculty at the Interlochen Arts Academy as a vocal/opera coach and music theory teacher at the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. She is currently a tenured associate professor in piano and theory at Geneva College.
Sha Wang is a Yamaha Artist.
Nanette Kaplan Solomon, pianist and Professor Emerita of Music at Slippery Rock University, performs frequently as soloist and chamber musician. She was on the faculty of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania from 1977-2014, where she coordinated the piano program, and taught music history, form and analysis, music skills, and women and music classes. She has presented lecture-recitals at the College Music Society national meetings in San Diego, Savannah, Cleveland, San Juan, Denver, Kansas City, Miami, Quebec City, San Antonio, Atlanta, Portland (OR), and Richmond (VA), and has performed at the international conferences in Berlin, Vienna, Kyoto, Limerick, Costa Rica, Madrid, Bangkok, Zagreb, Croatia, Seoul, Korea, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, Stockholm, Sweden and Helsinki, Finland. Dr. Solomon’s involvement with the works of women composers has led to invitations to perform at several Feminist Theory and Music conferences, the American Music/American Women symposium in Boulder, Colorado, the Athena Festival in Murray, Kentucky, as well as at nine of the International Festivals of Women Composers held at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She presented a lecture-recital of works by contemporary women at the MTNA national conference in Minneapolis in 2000. She has been a soloist with orchestras in Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, as well as featured artist with the Butler (PA), Youngstown and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras. Dr. Solomon has also performed at the Phillips Collection, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., Wigmore Hall in London, the Lincoln Center Library in New York City, and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. She has been a guest artist at colleges and universities in Pennsylvania, California, New York, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Florida, Minnesota, and Maine.
Dr. Solomon’s numerous awards include winner of the Pittsburgh Concert Society auditions, winner of the French Embassy award from the French Piano Institute, a fellowship to the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, semi-finalist in the University of Maryland International competition, and finalist in “Search for a Star” sponsored by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Marvin Hamlisch.
She is a founding member of the Slippery Rock Piano Trio, as well as the Kaplan Duo, with her sister , pianist Iris Kaplan Rosenthal. With those groups, she has performed throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, and at numerous venues in New York State. A former board member for performance of the College Music Society, she was recently named editor of the CMS online Symposium Audio Performance Archive. She also served on the editorial board of the American Music Teacher. She has been a board member of the International Alliance of Women in Music, for whose journal she writes frequent reviews, and serves on the board of the Pennsylvania Music Teachers Association. Her three compact discs- piano music of Nikolai Lopatnikoff (Laurel), Character Sketches and Sunbursts (Leonarda) have received critical acclaim. She is also a featured performer on composer Judith Lang Zaimont’s CD’s Pure Colors and Prestidigitations. Her CD Badinage: Piano Music of Mana-Zucca was released in 2015 on the Albany label, and has been garnering stellar reviews. Dr. Solomon received her early training as a scholarship student at the Juilliard School, where she studied with the late Edgar Roberts and Mme. Rosina Lhevinne. She received a B.A. degree magna cum laude from Yale College, where she studied with the late Ward Davenny and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, an M.M. from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with the late Claude Frank, and a D.M.A. from Boston University School for the Arts, where she studied with the late Leonard Shure.
Dr. Soyoung jung
The first prizewinner in the 2018 Inaugural Pittsburgh International Piano Competition (Young Artist), concert pianist Soyoung participated in a winner's concert held in late July at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in New York City.
Soyoung is an active soloist and chamber musician performing primarily around North America and South Korea. Some of her other prizes include first prizes at the Yale National Music Competition and Keimyung University Piano Department Alumni Competition, as well as second and third prizes from several national competitions in Korea. As a Penn State Philharmonic Concerto Competition winner, she performed a movement from Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 11) with the orchestra in February 2016. She was awarded an Honorable Mention at the Marian Garcia International Piano Competition in 2015.
Soyoung has performed in festivals at the Beethoven Institute and Ecole Normal International Music Festival in Paris. She has also been selected to perform in masterclasses with Logan Skelton, Mikhail Alexandrov, Choong-Mo Kang, and HaeSun Paik.
Jung completed her undergraduate studies at Keimyung University in Daegu, Korea. She received her master’s degree in piano performance from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University where she studied with renowned pianist Brian Ganz. She is currently a doctoral candidate and teaching assistant at Penn State, studying with faculty member José Ramón Méndez.
Ms. Zhang is the CEO and faculty of Tianyou Arts Academy. Adjunicators of numerous national and international piano competitions, Ms. Zhang is the leading pedagogue in her field. Under her leadship, TAA has produced generations of young artists that have advanced in various competitions in China, Hongkong, U.S, and Europe. Her students have performed on the same stage with artists, such as Lang Lang, winning competitions such as the Geneva International Music Festival and Competition. Ms. Zhang will be adjundicating the Duet Division in the upcoming Pittsburgh International piano Competition.
Ms. Zhang was the top prize winner of the 2019 Pittsburgh International Piano Competition. She was a graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Liege, Belgium, under the direction of Prof. Jean Schils. Ms. Zhang has performed throughout Europe, China, and the U.S. Her Carnegie Hall debut in New York city was part of the Winners Concert of the latest Pittsburgh International Piano Competition. Ms. Zhang will serve as an adjundicator for the Duet Division in t he upcoming PIPC in 2020.
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