Liza Stepanova appointed new Assistant Professor of Piano

Dr. Liza Stepanova has accepted the position of Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Georgia Hugh Hodgson School of Music, with her duties beginning this fall. Dr. Stepanova holds an undergraduate performance degree from the Berlin Hanns Eisler Academy of Music, with an accompanying masters and doctorate from The Juilliard School. While at Juilliard, she was named recipient of the Robert French Award for an outstanding dissertation.  

Recently, Dr. Stepanova served at Smith College in Massachussetts, where she taught applied piano and chamber music as the Iva Dee Hiatt Visiting Artist in Piano, and Juilliard, where she also taught music theory and history.

From Stepanova's website:

Praised by The New York Times for her “thoughtful musicality” and “fleet-fingered panache,” Liza Stepanova is in demand as a soloist, collaborator, and educator. She has performed extensively in Europe, most recently, as a soloist with the Southwest German Philharmonic and in chamber music performances at the Berlin Museum of Musical Instruments and Belgrade’s Kolarac Hall. In the United States, she has appeared in Weill and Zankel Recital Halls at Carnegie; Alice Tully Hall, Merkin and Steinway halls in New York City; at the Kennedy Center and The Smithsonian in Washington, DC; and live on WQXR New York, WFMT Chicago, and WETA Washington.

Stepanova has twice been a soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra led by James DePreist and Nicholas McGegan and was a top prizewinner at the Liszt-Garrison, Juilliard Concerto, Steinway, and Ettlingen competitions. As a member of the Lysander Piano Trio, she won the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Competition and received the Grand Prize at the 2011 Coleman Competition. The Trio has given its Kaufman Center and Carnegie Weill Hall recital debuts in 2014 to enthusiastic reviews in The Strad and The New York Times. The ensemble has commissioned two world premieres and has recently released a debut CD “After A Dream” that has garnered positive reviews with features in The New York Times Classical Playlist, on WQXR, and the Minnesota Public Radio.

Highlights of the 2014-15 season include performances of music by Franz Liszt at Yamaha Salon in New York and at the American Liszt Society’s 50th-anniversary conference, a new-music residency at UC Davis, and recitals with the Lysander Trio at the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois, San Francisco’s Morrison Artists Series, and Chamber Music Tulsa, and with members of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center’s Kaplan Penthouse.

Stepanova has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at the international festivals at Castleton, La Jolla, Music@Menlo and Davos (Switzerland), where she had opportunities to collaborate with seasoned artists including violinist Cho-Liang Lin, violist James Dunham, soprano Lucy Shelton and mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer. Deeply committed to new music, she has worked with the AXIOM, New Juilliard, and Mimesis ensembles. Stepanova collaborated with many distinguished composers, including Robert Beaser, Gabriela Lena Frank, John Harbison, Lowell Liebermann and John Musto, and premiered new compositions by Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen, Jakub Ciupinski, and Tom Cipullo.

Liza Stepanova studied art song collaboration with Wolfram Rieger in Berlin and was invited by the late Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau to perform in several of his masterclasses including the Hugo-Wolf Tage festival in Austria. Between 2011-2013, she was a founding member of the innovative SongFusion ensemble, for which she curated several programs combining music with visual art and recitation. Since 2013, Stepanova serves as Associate Artistic Director and Piano Program Director at SongFest at The Colburn School in Los Angeles.

Stepanova received her DMA from The Juilliard School in 2012 with a Richard F. French Award for an outstanding dissertation. Previously a graduate of the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin, Germany, she studied with Joseph Kalichstein, Seymour Lipkin, Jerome Lowenthal, and George Sava, and performed in masterclasses for Alfred Brendel, Daniel Barenboim and Andras Schiff. Stepanova has been on the faculty at The Juilliard School since 2012 and currently also holds the position of Iva Dee Hiatt Visiting Artist in Piano at Smith College.

Photo courtesy of liza-stepanova.com