joseph.banowetz@unt.edu / (940) 565-3717
Joseph Banowetz has been described byFanfare Record Review (U.S.) as "a giant among keyboard artists of our time," by Russia's News (Moscow) as "a magnificent virtuoso, who amazed the public by his deep understanding of the composer's spirit," and by Ruch Muzyczny (Warsaw) as "a virtuoso in the noblest sense of the word." A graduate with a First Prize from the Vienna Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, his teachers have included Carl Friedberg (a pupil of Clara Schumann) and György Sándor (a pupil of Béla Bartók). Banowetz has been heard as recitalist and orchestral soloist on five continents, with performances in recent seasons with such orchestras as the St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) Philharmonic, the Moscow State Symphony, the Prague and Bratislava Radio Orchestras, the Budapest Symphony, the New Zealand Symphony (on a twelve-concert national tour), the Beijing Central Philharmonic, Barcelona Concert Society Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the Shanghai Symphony.Banowetz was awarded the Liszt Medal by the Hungarian Liszt Society in Budapest, in recognition of his outstanding performances of Liszt and the Romantic literature. Banowetz has recorded over thirty compact discs for the Naxos, Marco Polo, Warner Brothers, Toccata Classics, and Altarus labels, these including the Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1, Liszt Concertos and Totentanz, d'Albert Concertos, and world-premiere recordings of all eight of the Anton Rubinstein piano and orchestra works, the Balakirev Fantasy on Russian Folk Songs, and the Taneyev Piano Concerto. His recorded solo repertory includes music of Bach, Busoni, Balakirev, Chopin, Debussy, Godowsky, Huang, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Rubinstein, Schumann, Stevenson, and Taneyev. One of the Rubinstein orchestra and piano series was named by Fanfare Record Review (U.S.) as an outstanding international release for 1993, and a similar citation was given in 1987 by the German Music Critics Association for his world-premiere of works by Balakirev.
Brad Beckman
bradley.beckman@unt.edu / (940) 565-3771
Brad Beckman is originally from Harvard, Illinois, and received his bachelor of music degree from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1986. While at IWU Dr. Beckman received numerous competitive scholarships, was Honors Recitalist, and was selected for Pi Kappa Lambda membership. Continued study with Joseph Banowetz brought Dr. Beckman to the University of North Texas in 1986 where he earned both a master of music degree and a doctor of music degree in Piano. While at UNT Dr. Beckman held a competitive Teaching Fellowship in Piano and received the Mary M. Morgan Dissertation Award for Excellence in Music Performance for his work on Ronald Stevenson's Passacaglia on DSCH. Dr. Beckman is currently Lecturer in Piano at the University of North Texas where he teaches Piano Pedagogy, Keyboard Skills classes and is faculty advisor for the UNT/TMTA Collegiate Student Chapter. He also maintains a private studio at the Hockaday School in Dallas. Dr. Beckman has performed throughout the Midwest, is a frequent adjudicator and has contributed to Keyboard Companion Magazine regarding the teaching of adult students. He has been active in Texas Music Teachers Association as Presenter, Performance Contest Coordinator, Appointed Director, past President of the Plano Music Teachers Association and currently as a member of the Executive Board for TMTA.
Dr. Beckman is a frequent performer throughout the Midwest and has performed at the State Department in Washington, D.C., as part of the State of the Arts concert series where his playing was described as "sensitive, well constructed and erupting in a flood of emotions_..." State Magazine_, Washington, D.C. He also performs regularly with two-piano partner, Dr. Carolyn True of Trinity University. Dr. Beckman is a member of the Ronald Stevenson Society, College Music Society and the American Liszt Society.
Pamela Mia Paul
pamela.paul@unt.edu / (940) 565-3726
Pamela Mia Paul is both a brilliant performer and a deeply dedicated teacher. On stage, she has performed with the world’s great orchestras. She has given concerts throughout the U.S., and in Europe, the People’s Republic of China, South Korea and Turkey both as soloist and as chamber musician. In the studio, or in the setting of a Master Class, she is an internationally sought-after pedagogue whose students hold teaching positions throughout the United States and Asia, and who have participated in and won competitions including the Nina Widemann Competition and the Naumburg International Piano Competition. Ms. Paul has commissioned and premiered works for the piano; Robert Beaser’s Piano Concerto, which was written for her, had its world premiere in the U.S., with the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin, and in Europe with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic under the baton of American conductor Richard Dufallo. The Beaser Concerto had its New York premiere in 1992 at Carnegie Hall, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the American Composer’s Orchestra.
Miss Paul has received critical acclaim for her appearances with orchestras in the U.S. and Europe, where her interpretations of both standard repertoire and twentieth-century piano concertos have garnered consistent critical praise.
Miss Paul's European orchestral appearances include the Vienna ORF Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Berlin Stadskapelle, and the Dutch Radio Symphony; her U.S orchestral appearances include those with the New York Philharmonic, symphonies of Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Houston, American Composers Orchestra, Boston Pops, New York Pops, the Minnesota Orchestra, and Caramoor Festival Orchestra.
In both orchestral performances and recitals, Ms. Paul has appeared in world’s major concert halls including Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, and the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.
As a chamber musician, she has been an invited guest artist at the Salzburg and Bregenz Festivals in Austria, Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, and at Music Mountain in Connecticut. Quartets with which she has performed include Cassatt, Penderecki, Borromeo, Chester, Orlando, Leontovich, Miro, DaPonte and St. Petersburg.
Summer programs at which Ms. Paul has taught include the Prague International Master Classes, The Institute for Strings, and the Vienna International Piano Academy. She has presented master classes in Europe, the People’s Republic of China, Turkey, South Korea, and throughout the U.S. She returns to the People’s Republic of China in May 2010. Pamela Mia Paul received the doctor of musical arts, master of music, and bachelor of music degrees from the Juilliard School. She is currently Regents Professor of Piano at the University of North Texas and is a Steinway artist.
gustavo.romero@unt.edu /
Gustavo Romero joined the piano faculty of the University of North Texas College of Music in fall of 2002 after five years serving on the faculty of the University of Illinois, and nine years on the faculty of the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina.
His formal training was earned at The Juilliard School, graduating with a bachelor's of music in 1988, and a master's of music in 1997. In 1989, Romero was the winner of the prestigious Clara Haskill International Piano Competition in Switzerland. Other major awards include the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Musical America Young Artist of 1988, Austin, TX "Key to the City Award," and the Maurice Braun Award of the San Diego Historical Society.
Since 1999, Romero has performed numerous complete recital cycles at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, including Chopin: The Complete Published Solo Piano Works; Bach: The Leipzig Keyboard Works; and Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas. He has played with Radio France Orchestra, Philharmonica Hungarica, and Liége Philharmonic, and performed concerts in Paris, Zurich, Milan, and Berlin, among other cities He has appeared at major festivals, including New York's Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Montpellier Festival in France. In addition, he recently performed recitals at both the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. and at Alice Tully Hall in New York. Romero has also conducted master classes nationwide, as well as in Europe and South Africa.
His discography includes four Koch International CDs: A REM CD featuring Isaac Albéniz's Change d'Espagne; a recording of Claude Debussy's Images I et II; and his latest disc of Domenico Scarlatti's Keyboard Sonatas.
Vladimir Viardo
vladimir.viardo@unt.edu / (940) 565-4653
Although pianist Vladimir Viardo represents the "Russian School," he clearly is not a typical Russian musician--a fact recognized even in his homeland. Irina Naumova, wife of the legendary pedagogue, taught Viardo at Gnessin College until her husband accepted him in the Moscow Conservatory where he remained as a student for six years. During this time, he was tenured as a soloist by Moscow Philharmonia (the primary music organization of the USSR). After obtaining a doctorate, he was immediately engaged as assistant professor with Naumov at the Conservatory, where he is associated to this day. Viardo carried off the top prize in the Fourth Quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition at age 23 and had already launched an impressive global career when his travel visa was mysteriously revoked. For nearly thirteen years, Viardo was a virtual prisoner of the Iron Curtain. During this closed period, he developed new horizons in his artistic achievements, vastly enlarging his repertoire, eventually including 37 concertos. Just as mysteriously, when the new era of Glasnost and Perestroika began opening the doors of the then Soviet Union, Viardo was permitted to accept engagements in Germany and in the United States.
He joined the University of North Texas College of Music faculty as artist-in residence in 1989. An extraordinary and celebrated teacher, his international roster of students includes young artists from Eastern Europe, as well as Spain, Mexico, South Africa and the United States. Viardo's master classes are much in demand throughout the world and his name appears in the book The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the USA.
Since returning to the West where his international career resumed with several concerts at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln and Kennedy Centers, Salle Pleyel and the Concertgebouw, Viardo's tours have taken him to leading American, Canadian and European cities, Asia and South Africa as well as to Israel, Central and South America, appearing as soloist with most of the important conductors on the world scene. He has made numerous recordings for Melodiya in Russia and Pro Arte and Nonesuch in the United States.
adam.wodnicki@unt.edu / (940) 565-3715
Internationally renowned pianist, recording artist and pedagogue, Polish born artist ADAM WODNICKI has received acclaim on five continents for his dramatic interpretations, poetic sensitivity and brilliant technique. He can be heard on MUZA, FOLKWAYS, CENTAUR, WERGO, ALTARUS and KLAVIER labels. Recent releases of cello and piano sonatas by Dzubay, Muczynski and Shostakovich with cellist Carter Enyeart (Centaur) and solo discs with piano works by Ignacy Jan Paderewski (Altarus) received rave notices: "one of the year's best contemporary chamber music albums" (Chicago Tribune), "incontestable brilliance" (Harold C. Schonberg in American Record Guide), and "a recording by a master pianist" (Journal of the American Liszt Society). The most recent CD release of the three Piano Trios by Robert Muczynski was chosen by a FANFARE critic as one of the top five recordings on the "Best of 2004" list. Wodnicki has also made numerous radio and TV recordings as well as concerto recordings with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Adam Wodnicki has concertized and taught in North and South America, Europe, Africa and the Far East. He has appeared in such musical centers as Krakow, Warsaw, Helsinki, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Pretoria and Prague. In recent seasons he has appeared at prestigious international music festivals such as Arundel Festival in England, Les Rencontres Internationales Frederic Chopin in Nohant, France, Chopin Festival in Marianske Lazne (Marienbad), Czech Republic, and others; he has also performed and taught in Japan, the Czech Republic, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Israel, South Africa, Colombia, Spain and Portugal. Since 1991 he has returned yearly to his native Poland for highly successful tours; his appearance at the Paderewski Festival in Krakow was described by the press as a "pianistic sensation"(Czas Krakowski).
Adam Wodnicki studied with Jan Hoffman, Guido Agosti and Gyorgy Sebok, and his artistic roots can be traced to the traditions of Fryderyk Chopin, Franz Liszt and Ferrucio Busoni. Three-time prizewinner of the Annual Chopin Society National Piano Competition in Warsaw and the recipient of three prizes at the Eighth Festival of Polish Pianists, Wodnicki is Professor of Piano at the University of North Texas in Denton, and Co-Director of an international summer course Piano Masterclasses in Prague, now in its sixth year. He has served on juries of international competitions and is a performance editor for the Musica Iagellonica's first ever edition of The Complete Works by Paderewski. Mr. Wodnicki is a Steinway Artist.
Steve Harlos
steven.harlos@unt.edu / (940) 565-3728
Steven Harlos made his solo debut at Lincoln Center in 1986, performing the Gershwin Concerto in F. Known for his sensitivity as an collaborative artist, he has performed with many artists of international stature, including Timofei Dokshutzer, Harvey Phillips, Erick Friedman, and Gervase de Peyer. In the popular music field, he has worked with such diverse artists as Marvin Gaye, Dionne Warwick, Chaka Khan, Maureen McGovern and Tommy Tune. As a jazz pianist, he assisted Dick Hyman in the first performances of his ballet Piano Man with the Cleveland Ballet, and subsequently performed the work with the Cleveland Ballet on numerous occasions. He also performed Mr. Hyman's ballet The Bum's Rush, with the American Ballet Theater at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Recent successes in the field of composition include the publication of his Sonata Rubata for flute and piano by Southern Music Company, and the world premiere of his recent compositon benniana, a jazz sonatina for clarinet and piano, in China at the Changchun International Saxophone and Clarinet Festival. An active musician in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, he currently serves as Staff Keyboardist for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and as Coordinator of Piano and Collaborative Piano at the University of North Texas in Denton.
