Manhattan School of Music

Aaron Jay Kernis is an American composer and professor at the Yale School of Music. Aaron Jay Kernis is Jewish, was born in Philadelphia,... Pennsylvania, and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory, and Yale University ., Notable works include the New Era Dance, his second string quartet Musica Instrumentalis , Colored Field for English horn and orchestra , Superstar Etude for piano, and Symphony in Waves. He began his musical career studying the violin and then piano before deciding at age 13 to take up composition; this influence can be seen in his frequent and skillful use of strings in orchestral works and as solo instruments. At age 16 he won the first of three BMI Foundation Student Composer Awards, one of the most prestigious prizes for young composers. His use of instrumental color in general is notable, as is his integration of a variety of musical, literary, and social influences into his work.
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Kirill Gerstein , is an American and Russian pianist. He was the First Prize winner at the 2001 Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. He... was chosen to receive a 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award, and was selected as Carnegie Hall's "Rising Star" for the 2005–2006 season. He became an American citizen in 2003 and is currently a professor of piano at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart. He is the 2010 recipient of the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award. Kirill Gerstein was born in 1979 in Voronezh. At the age of 11, he won his first competition - the International Bach Competition in Gorzów, Poland. He attended Berklee's summer program in 1993 and was invited to attend the college on full scholarship the following summer, becoming the youngest college student in the school's history at the age of 14. He then attended the Manhattan School of Music with Solomon Mikowsky and earned both his Bachelor and Masters of Music degrees by the age of 20. His studies later took him to Madrid with the piano pedagogue Dmitri Bashkirov and Claudio Martínez Mehner at the Queen Sofía College of Music.
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Kirill Gerstein , is an American and Russian pianist. He was the First Prize winner at the 2001 Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. He... was chosen to receive a 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award, and was selected as Carnegie Hall's "Rising Star" for the 2005–2006 season. He became an American citizen in 2003 and is currently a professor of piano at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart. He is the 2010 recipient of the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award. Kirill Gerstein was born in 1979 in Voronezh. At the age of 11, he won his first competition - the International Bach Competition in Gorzów, Poland. He attended Berklee's summer program in 1993 and was invited to attend the college on full scholarship the following summer, becoming the youngest college student in the school's history at the age of 14. He then attended the Manhattan School of Music with Solomon Mikowsky and earned both his Bachelor and Masters of Music degrees by the age of 20. His studies later took him to Madrid with the piano pedagogue Dmitri Bashkirov and Claudio Martínez Mehner at the Queen Sofía College of Music.
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John Corigliano is an American composer of classical music and a teacher of music. He is a distinguished professor of music at Lehman College in the... City University of New York. Italian American Corigliano was born to a musical family. His father, John Corigliano Sr., was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for 23 years, and his mother, Rose Buzen, is an accomplished educator and pianist. He is a former student of Otto Luening , Vittorio Giannini and Paul Creston. Corigliano attended P.S. 241 and Midwood High School in Brooklyn. He studied composition at Columbia University and at the Manhattan School of Music. Before achieving success as composer, Corigliano worked as assistant to the producer on the Leonard Bernstein Young People's Concerts, and as a session producer for classical artists such as André Watts. Most of Corigliano's work has been for symphony orchestra. He employs a wide variety of styles, sometimes even within the same work, but aims to make his work accessible to a relatively large audience. He has written symphonies, as well as works for string orchestra, and wind band.
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Pinchas Zukerman is a violinist, violist, and conductor of Israeli descent. He is considered to be one of the world's preeminent violinists of the... 20th and 21st centuries, and his ongoing 45-year career has seen him perform with the world's best-known orchestras and record over 100 works. Born in Tel Aviv to Yehuda and Miriam Lieberman Zukerman, Zukerman began his musical studies at age 4, on the recorder. His father then taught him clarinet, and picked up the violin at age 8. Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals learned of Zukerman's violin talent during a 1962 visit to Israel. Zukerman subsequently moved to the United States that year for study at the Juilliard School, under the tutelage of Stern and Ivan Galamian. He made his New York début in 1963. In 1967, he shared the Leventritt Prize with the Korean violinist Kyung-wha Chung. His 1969 debut recordings of the concerti by Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn launched a successful recording career that continues to the present day and boasts over 110 releases.
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Luciana Souza is a Brazilian jazz singer and composer who has crossed over into classical music. Daughter of poet Tereza Souza and... singer-composer-guitarist Walter Santos, she grew up in São Paulo. She is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston from which she received a Bachelor's degree in Jazz Composition. She then received a Master's degree from the New England Conservatory of Music. She began her career at the age of three by recording jingles for commercials. She has also worked in the field of European classical music, working with the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, composer Osvaldo Golijov, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. She has been nominated four times for a Grammy Award as best jazz vocalist. She has appeared and recorded with both renowned jazz musicians and composers of new music, including Danilo Perez, Hermeto Pascoal, Romero Lubambo, Maria Schneider, Kenny Werner, John Patitucci, Herbie Hancock, and Osvaldo Golijov.
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