(Past) Piano Festival

Join the Pioneer Piano Studio, along with guest artist Gregory Chaverdian, for the UW-Platteville Piano Festival! This festival will feature two days of public lessons, a question and answer session, and two recitals. This festival is open to area middle and high school piano students and teachers, as well as the UW-Platteville community. Registration for piano participants is required and can be completed at this link: http://app.campdoc.com/register/uwplatteville.

Join distinguished piano professor Gregory Chaverdian from Concordia University, Canada, for multiple piano events at Brodbeck Concert Hall. Participation is open to area piano students who are ready to perform a solo piano work, preferably from the class A solo repertoire list for WSMA Solo & Ensemble festivals or similar level, and pianists of any age who have studied for at least five years are welcome to attend. Please come prepared to have a lesson and perform a polished piece of solo piano repertoire. All others, including community members, teachers, and UW-Platteville faculty, staff, and students, are invited to observe events and enjoy recitals.

Offerings for piano participants include:
50-minute individual lessons (open to the public)
Participation in student recital
Lesson obeservations
Recital by Prof. Chaverdian, his student Angela Yixuan Miao (10 years old), and Dr. Kaju Lee
Q&A Session

Festival Schedule:

Friday, September 15
9 am - Rehearsal
10 am - Lesson 1
11 am - Lesson 2
12 pm - Lunch Break
1 pm - Lesson 3
2 pm - Lesson 4
3 pm - Lesson 5
4 pm - Lesson 6
5 pm - Rehearsal
6 pm - Guest Artist Recital

Saturday, September 16
10 am - Lesson 7
11 am - Lesson 8
12 pm - Lunch Break
1 pm - Lesson 9
2 pm - Lesson 10
3 pm - Lesson 11
4 pm - Q & A Session (click here to submit your questions ahead of time)
5 pm - Student Recital (Including local middle and high school students and UW-Platteville students)

Each lesson will be 50 minutes long and open to the public. Lesson participants. please arrive no later than five minutes before your lesson time.

Festival Fees:

Click here to register

Student piano participants under 18 - $20 (one parent/guardian included)
Includes a 50-minute lesson, participation in student recital, admission to faculty/guest recital, lesson observations, and Q&A session

Local teachers - $10
Includes lesson observations, admission to both recitals, and Q&A session

General admission - $10
Includes admission to both recitals

UW-Platteville students, faculty, and staff - all events free with UW-Platteville ID

Arrival information:

Driving directions and parking at UW-Platteville Brodbeck Concert Hall, Center for the Arts - https://goo.gl/maps/mHwuBTsBtfuA3CwBA

Parking lot 1 map; free on weekends - https://www.uwplatt.edu/parking

Guest Artist Biographies:

Gregory Chaverdian completed his MM and PhD in Piano Performance at the Komitas State Conservatory in Yerevan, Armenia, launching an international performing, teaching, and recording career. In 1989, he was awarded First Prize at the International Music Competition in Rio de Janeiro. Since then, Chaverdian has performed as a soloist and collaborative pianist in Russia, England, Ireland, France, Italy, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, and Canada, appearing with ensembles such as the Armenian State Philharmonic Orchestra, Armenian State Radio and Television Orchestra, New Brunswick Symphony Orchestra, FACE Orchestra, and I Musici de Montreal. He has also performed duo recitals with many chamber partners such as Vladimir Landsman, Yuli, Eleonora and Natasha Turovski, Robert Bardston, Liselyn Adams, Hélene Gagné, and James Campbell.  

A noted piano pedagogue, in 2000, Chaverdian joined the Piano Performance faculty at Concordia University. He has given master classes at the Lisbon Conservatory of Music and Schlern International Music Festival and is a faculty member of the International Music Academy in Burgos, Spain, and Castelnuovo di Garfagnana in Toscana, Italy. Every year, his students participate in concerts with the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras affiliated with Concordia University, the Canadian Music Competition (CMC), the New York International Music competition, and the Quebec Provincial Music Competition.  

His piano students are highly competitive at international competitions; a list of their prizes can be found at the bottom of the bio. Many of his students continue their studies at prestigious schools including London’s Royal College of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, Northwestern University, the University of Toronto, and the Moscow Conservatory. His former students have taught at the McGill Conservatory of Music, the Music College in Taipei, Taiwan, and the Music College in Seoul, Korea.  

Chaverdian is also an established classical recording artist. With English pianist David Owen Norris, he recorded a piano duo album for noted classical label Chandos under the direction of Yuli Turovski. With the soprano Aline Kutan (McGill University), he recorded an album of Armenian pieces. Recently, Chaverdian recorded a recital with world-renowned bass Barseg Tumanyan in London’s iconic Wigmore Hall and has been invited to perform with Tumanyan at Poland’s Wroclaw Music Festival and Ireland’s Wexford Opera Festival.  

“Phenomenal,” “fabulous,” “incredible,” “unbelievable,” “miraculous”—these words are never missing in the judges’ comments to young pianist Angela Yixuan Miao at every competition.

Miao was born January 30, 2013, in Tianjin, China, to a musically-inclined family. When she was five, her family immigrated to Montréal, Canada; at the age of six, she started piano study with Prof. Gregory Chaverdian. Within a year, she was performing J.S. Bach’s Concerto No. 5 in F minor with a Montréal orchestra. Between the ages of seven and nine, Miao mastered advanced solo piano works along with Beethoven’s Concerto No. 1, Op. 15, and Chopin’s Concerto No. 1, Op. 11, which she learned in less than six months. By the end of her second year of study, she won second prize in the Armenian Harmonium International Music Competition and was selected to compete in the Moscow Nutcracker International TV Contest as the youngest pianist, where she won the Nutcracker Diploma. Judge Anna Tsybuleva, noted Russian pianist, commented of Miao’s playing, “I can hear music in between the notes.” Miao was named one of the best young musicians in the London International Music Competition and won first prize in the nine-year-old category at Canada’s prestigious OMNI Music Competition, where she also took the Grand Prize in the 7-11 age group for all instruments.

In summer 2023, Miao participated in Spain’s Burgos International Music Festival Competition, where she won first prize in all age categories and instruments and performed Beethoven’s Piano Trio No. 1 in Eb Major. Away from the piano, Miao is an excellent student who plays violin in the school orchestra and has won French and mathematics competitions. Her hobbies include drawing, chess, and clarinet.

Pianist Kaju Lee has built a national and international career, performing solo and collaborative repertoire in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, and throughout the United States. Her performances have been broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Radio Korea (Seattle, Washington), WRGC (NPR in Milledgeville, Georgia), and the Busan Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation in South Korea.

Recent significant performances include the Mozart Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, No. 9 in E-flat Major, K. 271, with the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, South Africa's premier orchestra, in Durban City Hall (South Africa). The classical web magazine ArtSMart, which covers the arts in Durban and surrounding areas in South Africa, stated of this performance:

"Kaju Lee delivered this rapid and brilliant music with skill and aplomb. Her performance was delicate and it was much to the taste of the audience, and she and the orchestra were given prolonged applause at the end."

Currently, Dr. Lee is Assistant Professor of Piano Pedagogy and Collaborative Piano at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where she oversees the keyboard area and teaches Applied Piano, Piano Pedagogy, Class Piano and Collaborative Piano. She is also on the piano faculty at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Camp and serves as the MTNA (Music Teachers National Association) Composition Competition and Young Artist Competition Wisconsin State Coordinator. She has taught and/or collaborated at Georgia College (Milledgeville, Georgia), Sam Houston State University (Huntsville, Texas), the Texas Young Artists Competition, the Atlanta Flute Club, the Patti and Allan Herbert Frost School of Music Program (Salzburg, Austria), the Choral Symphony Society in New York City, and the Pre-College Division of the Manhattan School of Music. She has been invited to adjudicate at the Wisconsin Youth Piano Competition, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Beethoven Piano Competition and Shain Competition for Woodwind Piano Duos, MTNA South Carolina State’s Performance Competition, Wisconsin Music Teachers National Association’s Badger Competition, South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities’ Piano Competition, and Houston Music Teachers Association’s Piano Competition, among others.

In 2022, she recorded a CD with Daniel Rowland (tuba) of commissioned works, titled Widening Circles, and a CD titled 100 Years of Music for Cello and Piano with New Zealand cellist Emily Duffill.

Lee completed her Doctor of Musical Arts in Collaborative Piano at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and also holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and McGill University in Montréal.

For more information, visit www.kajuleepiano.com and follow the UW-Platteville Piano Studio on Instagram: @uwp_pioneerpiano