University of Vermont Music School Recital Hall
 

Faculty - Piano

Svetozar Ivanov
Svetozar Ivanov

Pianist Svetozar Ivanov has made numerous appearances as recitalist and orchestra soloist in Europe and North America. Recent venues include Festival “Peter the Great” in the Netherlands, Seiler Piano Festival in Crete, Association Philomuses in Paris, “Salon des Arts” in Bulgaria, North Netherlands Conservatory, Zurich Conservatory in Switzerland, Vicenza Conservatory in Italy, Robert Helps International Festival at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, Fox River Chamber Music Festival in Wisconsin, Chautauqua Music Festival in New York, Sequoia Concerts in San Francisco, The Steinway Series and the Encore Series in Florida and numerous concert series at universities throughout the US.

Svetozar Ivanov is a piano professor at University of South Florida and serves as Artistic Director of the Steinway Piano Series in Florida. He is also a Jury member at the Konzerteum International Piano Competition in Greece, the Seiler International Piano Competitions in Crete, and the International Youth Music Festival and Competition in Bulgaria. Svetozar Ivanov is a graduate of the Bulgarian National Conservatory and holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from University of Michigan.

“Svetozar Ivanov offered us the richness of colors, ephemeral texture of sound, leading to a grandiose ecstasy. The performer owns Scriabin's style to the final detail, full with many exuberant gasps and exalted flights toward the light.” (Musical Horizons, May, 2006)


Wonmin Kim

Pianist Wonmin Kim comes to the Green Mountain Music Festival from years as a much sought-after collaborative pianist in New York City where she collaborated with many of today’s most important artists including Sarah Chang, Cho Liang Lin, Chee Yun, David Chan, Robert Mann and Wolfgang Schmidt. Previous engagements include staff collaborative piano positions at the Juilliard School, the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Summer Academy Mozarteum Salzburg (Austria), the Great Mountain International Music Festival and School (Korea) and the Meadowmount School of Music.  Since 2006 Ms. Kim is also on the piano faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Most recent concert highlights include a US tour with violinist Chuan Yun Li and the collaboration with Igor Ozim in the World Masters Series at Kumho Art Hall (Seoul), which was also broadcasted by KBS and televised by Arirang TV.  Previous engagements as soloist and chamber music partner have led her to appearances in numerous celebrated concert venues, including Carnegie Weill Hall, Lincoln Center Alice Tully Hall, Strathmore, Kimmel Center, Zürich Tonhalle (Switzerland), Kioi Hall (Tokyo), Seoul Art Center, and Sejong Art Hall (Seoul). Ms. Kim has frequently appeared on Television and Radio broadcasts like WQXR, the Swiss Radio International, SRI and the Korean Broadcast System, KBS.  A CD-Recording has been released by KBS under the title Korean Musician for the 21 Century.

Wonmin Kim is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including Juilliard’s most prestigious Vladimir Horowitz Award.  She holds degrees from the Konservatorium für Musik und Theater Bern (Switzerland) and from the Juilliard School.

Paul Orgel Paul Orgel

Born in New York City, Paul Orgel has concertized throughout the United States and Eastern Europe as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and chamber musician. He has given notable concerts in such venues as New York's Merkin Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Jordan Hall, and the Gardner Museum in Boston, the Ordway Theater in St. Paul, and the San Francisco Conservatory. Critics have praised his playing for its “subtlety and attention to nuance” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “rare pathos” (New York Times), and “brilliant technique, sense of humor and fantasy” (Bridgeport Post).

A versatile musician with wide-ranging interests and an extremely varied repertoire, Orgel has been associated with many composers including Messaien, Cage, Rochberg, and T. L. Read. He can be heard on recordings of music by Louis Moyse (Works for Flute and Piano) on the CRI label, a 2003 Grammy nominee, and on Capstone (Keyboard Fantasies by Curt Cacioppo). His solo recording, Music of the Holocaust featuring music by Karel Berman, Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, and Viktor Ullmann, was released on the Phoenix USA label in 2005.

Orgel has specialized in Czech music, performing programs of the complete piano music of Janacek and music from Terezin; and, as a scholar of classical performance practice, he has given recitals of Haydn and Beethoven on the Viennese fortepiano.

As a chamber musician, Paul Orgel has been associated with the Yellow Barn Festival, was a founding member of the Interlochen Trio, and a long-time member of Music at Eden's Edge, an ensemble based in Boston's North Shore. He has collaborated with such artists as Jaime Laredo, the Chicago String Quartet, and the Quartetto di Venezia.

Orgel was educated at Oberlin, the New England Conservatory, and Boston University. He holds a doctorate in piano performance from Temple University. Among his piano teachers were Russell Sherman, Lillian and Irwin Freundlich, and Harvey Wedeen. He is currently a member of the music faculty at the University of Vermont and is director of the Humanities Program Concert Series at Saint Michael's College.

Brian Suits Brian Suits

Brian Suits wears the various hats of pianist, composer, conductor, and teacher. As pianist, Suits has performed concerti with both the Jupiter Symphony under the direction of Jens Nygaard, and the Sejong Soloists under the direction of Hyo Kang, among others. He has recorded a set of 23 CDs for Chung-Eum Music Publishers, released in Korea in 1995; included are some three dozen sonatas of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, the Bach Inventions, and the complete Czerny Etudes.

As a composer, Suits' output runs the gamut from serious modern works to jazz pieces and popular songs. His classical compositions have been heard in Merkin Hall and on WQXR and WNYC Radio in New York City. He was a finalist in the 1995 Schirmer Music Young Composer's Competition, and in the 1997 Renee Fisher Foundation Composer Awards. He premiered his piano concerto (2003) in KangNeung, Korea, in December of last year, and his first solo album of original works is being released this spring by Musikdorf Records.

Suits appears frequently on the concert stage in collaboration with other musicians, especially his wife, violinist Kyung Sun Lee. The Lee/Suits duo has performed nationwide under the auspices of both Community Concerts and Allied Concerts. The duo has recorded two CDs together: the first features music of Prokofiev, Debussy, and Bartok; the second, music of Saint-Saens, Godard, Chausson, Gershwin, Achron, and Suits himself. Their first CD received outstanding reviews from both Strad and Fanfare magazines. Suits has also recorded with tenor Robert Swenson.

Suits has been the conductor of the 21 Chamber Players string orchestra in Daejeon, Korea, and was a member of the faculty at the Yale School of Music from 1990-2002. He received his bachelor of music degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied with David Renner, and his master of music degree from USC, where he studied with Brooks Smith.

Dmitri Shteinberg
Dmitri Shteinberg

Dmitri Shteinberg has appeared in concert across North America, Germany, England, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Bulgaria and Israel. His solo performances include the Jerusalem Symphony, the Italian Philarmonica Marchetiana, Israel Chamber Orchestra, Israel Camerata Orchestra and Porto National Symphony; he was a guest artist at the Sarasota and Summit Music Festivals, Music Festival of the Hamptons, the ''Oleg Kagan'' Festival in Germany, Festival Aix-en-Provence in France and Open Chamber Music in Cornwall, England. Recent concerts include Kennedy Center and Alice Tully Hall, a recital at the Boas Charitable Trust in London and a performance of Beethoven's complete cello and piano sonatas at BargeMusic in New York.

Recently called "protean and refined" by the New York Times, Shteinberg has recorded for the Israeli ''Voice of Music'' radio station, WQXR, WHMT, the Bavarian Radio and the Yamaha Disklavier; collaborated with New York Philharmonic members and the cellists Han-Na Chang and Natalia Gutman.

Dmitri Shteinberg is a prizewinner in twenty competitions worldwide, including the first prize in ''Citta de Senigallia'' International Competition in Italy. In the United States, he won the Naomi Foundation Competition and the Artists International Debut Award, and received the Salon De Virtuosi Fellowship Grant. He holds a Doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music, and was appointed to the artist faculty of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in the fall of 2011.