About the Series
Developing the Total Musician – Teaching Essential Skills: Improvisation, Accompanying, and Sight Reading
We value the commitment of piano teachers to serve our students with professionalism and teaching expertise. Committed to education, we proudly present this complimentary three-part lecture series. To ensure the health and safety of our clinicians and participants, this year’s programs will be available to attend in-person and via live stream.
Students who are available to participate due to flexible remote learning schedules are also welcome to attend! The live stream link will be available on our website at ruggeropiano.com prior to each presentation. These workshops are complimentary – we invite you to join us in-person or via Live Stream!
About This Presentation
In this presentation Dr. Lyman discusses some of the basic elements required for success in developing sight reading skills. The methods and materials presented and discussed may lead one to wonder whether success in sight reading really is magic, or whether it can be attained through rigorous application of proven principles
About the Presenter
Dr. Kent Lyman is a Steinway Artist, and has distinguished himself as a soloist and chamber musician throughout much of the United States, in South Korea, China, Italy, and Brazil. He has performed and/or lectured in many venues, including the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, the National Conference of the Sonneck Society for American Music in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities in Honolulu, among many others. For the last several summers, he has worked as the principal rehearsal pianist for the International Young Artists Project, based in Monte San Savino, Italy. This program provides opportunities for young singers to study and perform Italian opera and art song in Italy, under the tutelage of native speakers. He has made a number of trips to South Korea where he has taught master classes and performed as a soloist at universities and schools throughout the country, including Seoul National University, Sejong University, and many others. In May of 2018, he was invited to give a keynote lecture on using technology in piano teaching at the National Conference of the Korean Piano Pedagogy Association. He delivered the lecture in Korean, which he speaks fluently. During a concert tour of Asia in the fall of 2007, he added China to his list of international venues, with concerts and master classes at conservatories of music in Shenyang and Guangzhou. He has toured Brazil, where he performed at the University of Campinas, and served as the opening concert artist and as a judge for the 22nd annual Paulo Giovanini National Piano Competition in Araçatuba, Brazil.
He has appeared with a number of orchestras, including the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony, the Raleigh Civic Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle (Raleigh, NC), the Broward Symphony Orchestra (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) and the Florence Symphony Orchestra (South Carolina). As one of twelve nationally selected finalists, he has performed at the Chicago Symphony’s Ravinia Festival in master classes with Menahem Pressler, Leon Fleisher, and Misha Dichter. He has toured the East coast with the Piedmont Trio in performances of a program commemorating the centenary of the death of Clara Schumann. Mr. Lyman has recorded for the Centaur label, and can be heard on a CD performing chamber works of the late American composer Virgil Thomson. There are also a number of professionally produced videos that are available to view on Youtube, including one of the only known recordings of Korean piano music by Bang-ja Hurh, her suite entitled Pieces of Arirang.
Kent Lyman is currently Professor of Music and Coordinator of Piano Studies at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. A native of Utah, he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Indiana University in Bloomington, where he studied with James Tocco.
Join us in welcoming Dr. Indrek Laul, Concert Pianist and CEO of Estonia Piano Company for “The Art of Sound” Masterclass!
Masterclass
This masterclass will feature four piano students and works from Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Lyapunov.
Dr. Clara Yang Bio
Praised for her “breathtaking technical prowess” (Cultural Voice of North Carolina) and “probing emotional depth and daring individuality” (Peninsula Reviews), Chinese-American pianist Clara Yang has performed on some of the world’s leading stages, including Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall (New York), the Forbidden City Concert Hall (Beijing), the National Auditorium of Music (Madrid), the Seymour Centre (Sydney), and Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theatre (Rochester). Featured on prestigious concert series such as Carolina Performing Arts and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series, she connects with audiences by creating deep emotional experiences through her musical storytelling.
She has appeared as soloist under the baton of distinguished conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Long Yu (余隆), Carl St. Clair, Josep Caballé Domenech, George Jackson, Laura Jackson, Tõnu Kalam, Grant Llewellyn, and Jeff Tyzik, with renowned orchestras such as the European Union Youth Orchestra, Sichuan Symphony Orchestra, Banda Sinfónica Municipal de Madrid, Pacific Symphony, and the North Carolina Symphony.
Yang is equally at home in the classical canon, new music, and interdisciplinary work. Known for her bold artistic vision, she has collaborated across genres with luminaries including pianist Aaron Diehl, new media artist Xuan, rock guitarist Yvette Young, and hip-hop artist Suzi Analogue. In 2024, she was named an Artist-in-Residence at the renowned Baryshnikov Arts for her multimedia project Ex Machina, will be presented by Baryshnikov Arts as part of Carnegie Hall’s United in Sound: America at 250 festival. A champion of new music, she performed alongside Philip Glass, Timo Andres, and other distinguished artists in The Complete Philip Glass Piano Etudes concert produced by Pomegranate Arts. She also gave the world and U.S. premieres of Chen Yi’s Piano Concerto Four Spirits—written for her—with the China Philharmonic Orchestra (中国爱乐) at the Forbidden Concert Hall in Beijing and on Carolina Performing Arts.
Her recordings have received critical acclaim and international media coverage. Her solo album Folding Time (Albany Records) was awarded a Global Music Awards Gold Medal and named one of the Best of 2016 by American Record Guide. Her collaborative albums—Mother Tales (Navona Records), with violinist Sunmi Chang, and Grieg and Prokofiev (Albany Records), with cellist Helen Xiao-Dan Zheng Altenbach—have been praised by Strings Magazine, Pizzicato, and Fanfare. Her performances have been broadcast worldwide, and she has been profiled by major media outlets and publications in both the United States and China.
A committed educator and mentor, she has presented masterclasses, lectures, and coaching sessions at leading institutions and festivals across the globe, including the China Conservatory of Music, Central Conservatory of Music, Piano Academy in Gulangyu, Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory’s Musical College, King’s College London, Liceu Conservatory in Barcelona, and the Southeastern Piano Festival. Her students have garnered top prizes in national and international competitions. She was a national reviewer for the renowned YoungArts organization and served on the Artistic Panel for New Music USA. Recipient of the prestigious Institute of Arts and Humanities Fellowship and the Schwab Academic Excellence Award at UNC-Chapel Hill, she currently serves as the Head of Keyboard Studies at the university.
Yang holds a DMA from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Nelita True; an MM and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music, under Claude Frank; and a BM from the USC Thornton School of Music, where she studied with John Perry. Her precollege mentors include Hans Boepple, Zhou Guangren (周广仁), and Li Huili.
