Penn State is pleased to announce the

2011 Marian Garcia Piano Competition and PA Liszt Association Piano Teacher's Workshop


with Special Guest Jerome Lowenthal
of the Juilliard School


and the Penn State Piano Faculty

Christopher Guzman, Timothy Shafer, Steven Smith

Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Franz Liszt

at the School of Music, University Park campus of Penn State

Esber Recital Hall, October 21-22, 2011. 

Jerome Lowenthal

Jerome Lowenthal (born February 11, 1932 in Philadelphia) is an American classical pianist. He is a professor of piano at the Juilliard School in New York, where he was also chair of the piano department. Additionally, Lowenthal is on the faculty at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California.

He made his debut at 13 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Returning to the United States from Jerusalem in 1963, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic, playing Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2. Since then, he has performed with famous conductors such Daniel Barenboim, Seiji Ozawa, Michael Tilson Thomas, Yuri Temirkanov, Leonard Slatkin, Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, Pierre Monteux, and Leopold Stokowski. He has played sonatas with Itzhak Perlman, piano duos with Ronit Amir, his late wife and Ursula Oppens, as well as quintets with the Lark Quartet, Avalon Quartet, and Shanghai Quartet.

His studies included lessons with Olga Samaroff in Philadelphia, William Kapell and Eduard Steuermann at the Juilliard School in New York, and Alfred Cortot at the École Normale de Musique de Paris in Paris, France. A prizewinner at Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels (1960) and Busoni Competition, he is a frequent judge in international piano competitions.

He is recognized as a specialist of Franz Liszt, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Béla Bartók, and more generally of virtuoso and late romantic music. His recordings include piano concertos by Liszt with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the complete Tchaikovsky concerto cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra. He has an extensive repertoire, including 59 performed piano concerti, and is the dedicatee of many new works and has unearthed some rare romantic piano works, such as the Liszt Third Piano Concerto edited by his former student Jay Rosenblatt.

Christopher Guzman has entertained audiences throughout North America, Europe and Asia.  A prizewinner in many international competitions, including the Walter M. Naumburg Competition, the Seoul International Music Competition and the Isang Yun Competition of South Korea, he has performed as soloist with many large ensembles, including the San Antonio Symphony, the Fort Worth Symphony, the Corpus Christi Symphony and The EOS Orchestra of New York City. He has performed concerti with the Juilliard Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and in Spoleto, Italy during the orchestra’s first summer residency at the 2003 Festival Dei Due Mondi. Mr. Guzman has appeared in recital in such varied venues as Carnegie’s Weill Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and Spoleto’s Teatro Caio Melisso.  
   
 An avid chamber musician, Mr. Guzman has performed in such venues as Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, the Kennedy Center, San Francisco Performances, the Vancouver Recital Series and others. He performs regularly with sought-after soloists such as violinists Tai Murray and Stephan Jackiw, and trombonist Joe Alessi of the New York Philharmonic; his recital with violinist Ilya Gringolts on National Public Radio’s Saint Paul Sunday continues to broadcast across the United States and online. Mr. Guzman also frequently collaborates with the Chameleon Chamber Players of Boston, recipients of the 2007 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.

Of special interest to Mr. Guzman is music of our time. He has collaborated with one of the nation’s preeminent contemporary chamber ensembles, Speculum Musicae, and numerous times with the New Juilliard Ensemble, including tours of the U.S. and France. The New York Times hailed his “coiled, explosive playing” of works by Christopher Theofanidis and Joseph Pereira at New York’s Society for Ethical Culture in 2002. He is a member of Second Instrumental Unit, a provocative new music ensemble based in the Northeast, and has participated in world premieres by such composers as Donald Martino, Bernd Franke and Paul Schoenfield.  

A Texas native, Christopher Guzman began studying piano at age nine and violoncello two years later. He has studied at the University of Texas at Austin, New England Conservatory, and at the Juilliard School. He is currently Assistant Professor of Piano at Pennsylvania State University.