External links
- Official site
- 'Ep. 36: Featuring Craig Sheppard, pianist' Interview by Tigran Arakelyan
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Craig Douglass Sheppard (born 26 November 1947, Philadelphia) is an American concert pianist and educator of Scots-Irish, English and German descent.
Craig Sheppard | |
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| Born | November 26, 1947 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
The son of Jeanne Linton and George Edgar Sheppard, Sheppard was raised in Jenkintown, PA, and graduated Abington High School in 1965. He studied with Eleanor Sokoloff at the Curtis Institute from 1965–68 and Sasha Gorodnitzki at the Juilliard School from 1968–71, graduating from the latter with Bachelor of Music and Master of Science degrees. [1] In 1968, he won the Bronze Medal in the Busoni Competition. In 1972, he won the Silver Medal at the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, which started his international career. [2] He later won a Bronze Medal in the Dino Ciani Piano Competition (1975).
Living in London from 1973 to 1993, Sheppard continued his studies with Peter Feuchtwanger and Sir Clifford Curzon, and performed with major British orchestras on multiple occasions, as well as many on the European continent. During those years, he taught at Lancaster University, the Yehudi Menuhin School, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He also gave frequent masterclasses at both Oxford and Cambridge universities. Sheppard returned to the United States in 1993 to take up a position as artist-in-residence at the University of Washington in Seattle, [3] becoming a full professor there in 2004. [4] In the past fifteen years, Sheppard has traveled extensively to the Far East, performing and giving master classes in Japan, Korea, China and Singapore. In 2012, he performed at the Nehru Memorial Library in New Delhi, and undertook a residency at the Melba Conservatory of the University of Melbourne. He also performed for the third time in New Zealand.
Sheppard's repertoire comprises over forty recital programs and sixty-five concerti. Recent performances of the 2014-15 season highlighted the 24 Preludes and Fugues of Shostakovich, which he performed in Houston, San Francisco, Oberlin, Shanghai, Beijing (the Forbidden City), and Seattle's Meany Theater. [5] [6] During the 2015-16 season, he will perform the cycle in London, New York, and Jerusalem, in addition to several American universities.
In the United States, Sheppard has performed with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, and Rochester, amongst others. Conductors he has worked with include Erich Leinsdorf, Sir Georg Solti, Kurt Sanderling, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir John Pritchard, James Levine, Michael Tilson Thomas, Esa-Pekka Salonen and David Zinman. In his collaborative work, over the years he has performed with the Bartók, Cleveland and Emerson string quartets, singers Victoria de los Angeles, José Carreras, Renato Bruson and Irina Arkhipova, violinists Ida Haendel, Sylvia Rosenberg and Mayumi Fujikawa, and many musicians of the younger generation, including James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, Richard O’Neill, Edward Arron and Johannes Moser.
Sheppard is the co-founder and co-director (with Dr. Robin McCabe) of the Seattle Piano Institute, a camp for young pianists held every July since 2010 at the University of Washington. [7]
Since 2000, Sheppard has published an average of more than one CD per calendar year, all of live performances. The earlier CDs were issued on the AT (Annette Tangermann) Label in Berlin. Since 2004, his CDs have been issued by Roméo Records in New York.
His CDs can be found on the EMI (Classics for Pleasure), Philips/Polygram, CBS/Sony, ASV, AT-Label, and Roméo labels.
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Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is an internationally recognized solo pianist, chamber music performer, and conductor. He is originally from Russia and has held Icelandic citizenship since 1972. He has lived in Switzerland since 1978. Ashkenazy has collaborated with well-known orchestras and soloists. In addition, he has recorded a large repertoire of classical and romantic works. His recordings have earned him five Grammy awards and Iceland's Order of the Falcon.
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There is a long tradition in classical music of writing music in sets of pieces that cover all the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. These sets typically consist of 24 pieces, one for each of the major and minor keys.
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