American Pianists Association Showcases Its Five Competition Finalists Throughout 2012-13, For Prize Valued at Over $100,000

Let the games begin! The American Pianists Association (APA), recognized by the New York Times for offering “profound early-career assistance” to world-class American classical and jazz pianists, will showcase the five finalists for its 2013 ProLiance Energy Classical Fellowship Awards throughout the 2012-13 season. From September to February, each finalist will perform a concerto with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra as part of the Classical Premiere Series in Indianapolis, home of the APA. Finalist Claire Huangci will be first on September 30 in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Subsequent concerts will take place in Indianapolis on November 11 (Sean Chen in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4); December 2 (Sara Daneshpour in Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2); January 27 (Andrew Staupe in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27); and February 24 (Eric Zuber in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1). Two international panels of judges will adjudicate the concerts in the Premiere Series and the second Indianapolis series, Classical Discovery Week, in April 2013. At the conclusion of the season-long competition events, on April 20, 2013, one finalist will be named the APA’s 2013 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellow, a musician with the potential to make significant contributions to American cultural life. New York City’s historic Trinity Church will present the APA’s newly selected winner and the four laureates in its Concerts at One series on April 25, 2013.
 
The APA offers one of the piano world’s most substantial prizes, valued at more than $100,000: $50,000 cash, plus recording opportunities and two years of career assistance and concert tours. The prize is awarded every two years on an alternating basis to a classical or a jazz pianist at the conclusion of a unique competition process that Performance Today radio host Fred Child has described as a “massive musical competition undertaking.”  Aaron Diehl is the APA’s 2011 Cole Porter Jazz Fellow, and one of the current finalists will be named the APA’s 2013 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellow.  
 
Each finalist, selected last March by a distinguished jury in a CD screening of America’s foremost young pianists ages 18 to 30, will come to Indianapolis during the season for an expense-paid week of activities, complete with a $5,000 stipend. In addition to performing with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, each finalist will play an adjudicated public solo recital, do outreach activities, public relations, and a three-day residency and performance with a high-school orchestra. “I believe that all piano competitions have value in that they reward achievement and excellence,” states Joel Harrison, the APA’s President/CEO and Artistic Director. “At APA we do that, certainly, but we have purposely structured our unique process to reflect some aspects of the very real professional world.”
 
All five finalists return to Indianapolis April 15-20, 2013 for the final stage of the competition, Classical Discovery Week, culminating in performances with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra on April 19 and 20, and the naming of the winner, the 2013 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellow. The nine concerts during Discovery Week showcase the finalists in a variety of musical settings: solo recitals, chamber music, new music, song, and concertos. In the coming months, names of five composers commissioned to write pieces for the finalists will be announced, along with names of other noted performers scheduled to appear as guest artists during Discovery Week.
 
New York’s Trinity Church will present the APA’s newly selected winner and the four laureates in its Concerts at One series on April 25, 2013, where the pianists will play the New York premieres of works commissioned for them by the APA.
 
Prior to their participation in the two APA-produced concert series, the five finalists will convene in Indianapolis next month, October 2 and 3, for a house music concert with APA donors and VIPs, followed by an all-day workshop with industry professionals and a tax specialist. The workshop is designed to focus on “the many and varied ‘non-artistic’ aspects of the arts world, to help the finalists move their careers forward and make wise, informed decisions,” says APA President Harrison. 
 
During his September 2012 “Performance Today” interview with APA finalist Andrew Staupe, Fred Child called the APA’s competition process “a fascinating idea. Instead of a week or two weeks of just a few events onstage, the five finalists will really be doing a concert series in Indianapolis over the course of fall and winter and spring, doing a huge variety of music in a bunch of different settings.”
 
 
About the Competition Finalists
 
Last March, a panel of judges selected the five classical finalists in the American Pianists Association competition through a preliminary round screening of CDs. The finalists are:
 
Sean Chen, 24, is second-prize winner of the 2011 Seoul International Music Competition and a prizewinner in the 2009 Cleveland International Piano Competition. Born in Margate, FL and raised in Oak Park, CA, he has performed in Bucharest, Seoul, Taiwan, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Miami, and New York. Chen received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Juilliard School, where he won the 2010 Gina Bachauer Piano Competition; he is pursuing his Artist Diploma at Yale University. His teachers have included Jerome Lowenthal, Matti Raekallio, and teacher-mentor Edward Francis.
“Pianist Chen leaves New West Symphony audiences ‘Spellbound’ … He brought piquant charm and prodigious fingerwork to play in [Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini], and a lush and ruminative spirit to [Miklós Rózsa’s ‘Spellbound’ concerto].”
— Ventura County Star
 
Sara Daneshpour, 25, won first prize at the XII Concours International de Musique du Maroc (Morocco, 2012), is the second-prize winner of the 2007 William Kapell International Piano Competition, first prize and Gold Medal winner of the 2007 International Russian Music Piano Competition, and first-prize winner of the 2003 Beethoven Society of America Competition. She joined the roster of Astral Artists as winner of the 2010 National Auditions. Daneshpour has performed in her hometown of Washington, D.C. as well as in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Russia, Germany, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, and Sweden. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, studying under Leon Fleisher, and is now pursuing her master’s degree at Juilliard with Yoheved Kaplinsky.
“She created transfixing poetry”— The Washington Post
“Sensational. Strength, finesse, passion; it was all there.” — The Mercury News
 
Claire Huangci, 22, won first prize in the 2010 National Chopin Piano Competition in Miami, and is a laureate in the 2010 Queen Elisabeth International Piano Competition. She made her debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2003 and has since performed with orchestras in Stuttgart, Frankfurt, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and the China Philharmonic, among others. Born in Rochester, NY, Huangci entered Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School at age seven and did her undergraduate work at the Curtis Institute of Music. She is currently studying at the Hochschule für Musik in Hannover, Germany with Professor Arie Vardi.
“The pianist displays the same talent once reserved for Vladimir Horowitz: phenomenal basses, dynamic phrases and a great feel for timbres.” — Allegemeine Zeitung
 
Andrew Staupe, 28, recently made his Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall as recipient of the 2011 Pro Musicis International Award, and he is the Gold Medalist of the 2010 Young Texas Artists Music Competition. The St. Paul, MN native has performed with the Minnesota Orchestra and has toured throughout the U.S. and Europe, appearing at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, as well as in Russia, Latvia, Romania, France, Germany, and Bulgaria. Staupe received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota with Lydia Artymiw, and is currently completing his DMA in piano performance at Rice University in Houston with Jon Kimura Parker.
“Mr. Staupe gave a brilliant performance, handling the virtuosic demands with apparent ease, capturing the savage without ever resorting to pounding, and maintaining a tremendous level of stamina and power… I was stunned- this was one of the most incredible performances of this masterpiece [Villa-Lobos’s Rudepoema] I have ever heard, live or recorded … a once-in-a-lifetime performance!” — New York Concert Review
 
Eric Zuber, 27, has won major prizes in seven international piano competitions: the Cleveland, Arthur Rubinstein, Seoul, Sydney, Dublin, Minnesota, and Hilton Head competitions. The Baltimore, MD native made his orchestral debut at the age of twelve with the Baltimore Symphony, and has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Korean Symphony, and Ireland’s RTE National Symphony, among others. Zuber holds degrees from the Peabody Institute, Curtis Institute of Music, and the Juilliard School, and is currently pursuing his DMA at Peabody. His teachers have included Boris Slutsky, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, and Robert McDonald.
“Zuber held the audience in the palms of his hands [in Liszt’s Sonata in B minor]. Under the wrong circumstances, this piece can sound like a bag of virtuosic tricks, but Zuber shaped it with a keen ear for both the score’s celestial lyricism and diabolical ferocity.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
About the Fellowship
 
The APA’s Fellowship provides a $50,000 cash award and two years of career assistance and performances, valued together at more than $100,000. Performance opportunities during the fellowship period involve solo recitals as well as appearances with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and symphony orchestras of Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Santa Fe, and Tucson. Previous winners have been presented at the Kennedy Center, Phillips Collection, Dame Myra Hess Series, Chopin Foundation of America, in various recital series nationwide, and on tours overseas. Steinway is the official piano of the 2013 Fellowship, and the chosen Fellow will issue a solo recording on the Steinway label, for distribution by ArkivMusic.
 
Unlike any other major piano competition, the APA focuses equally on classical and jazz pianists. Since 1992, the Association has offered Jazz Fellowships, with a similar cash award of $50,000 – the largest available in the jazz piano world. The 2011 Cole Porter Fellow in Jazz is Aaron Diehl, hailed by the New York Times as a “revelation”; former Fellows include Dan Tepfer (2007) and Aaron Parks (2001). The next Cole Porter Fellow in Jazz will be named in April 2015.
 
Mission
 
The mission of the American Pianists Association is to discover, promote, and advance the careers of young, American, world-class jazz and classical pianists. Since its founding in 1979, the organization has supported 43 Fellows. The 2009 Classical Fellows are Adam Golka, also a Gilmore Young Artist, who impressed the Washington Post with his “combination of brilliant technique and real emotional depth”; and Grace Fong, a “positively magical” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition. Among the previous Classical Fellows are Spencer Myer (2006), Christopher Taylor (2000), Frederic Chiu (1985), and Sara Davis Buechner (1981). The APA was founded in 1979 as the Beethoven Foundation. In 1982, two of its founders, Victor Borge and Tony Habig, moved the national headquarters to Indianapolis.
 
Schedule of American Pianists Association Competition Events
The 2013 ProLiance Energy Classical Fellowship Awards of the American Pianists Association
 
Note: All events take place in Indianapolis unless otherwise indicated.
Sept 30, 2012, 3:30pm
Premiere Series; Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center
Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra
Claire Huangci, piano
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor
 
Nov 11, 2012, 3:30pm
Premiere Series; Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center
Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra
Sean Chen, piano
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major
 
Dec 2, 2012, 3:30pm
Premiere Series; Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center
Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra
Sara Daneshpour, piano
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor
 
Jan 27, 2013, 3:30pm
Premiere Series; Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center;
Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra
Andrew Staupe, piano
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major
 
Feb 24, 2013, 3:30pm
Premiere Series; Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center;
Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra
Eric Zuber, piano
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor
 
April 15, 2013, noon
Discovery Week; Christ Church Cathedral
Chamber music and solo recital
 
April 15, 2013, 7:30pm
Discovery Week; Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall
Recital: premieres of APA-commissioned works
 
April 16, 2013, noon
Discovery Week; Christ Church Cathedral
Chamber music and solo recital
 
April 17, 2013, noon
Discovery Week; Christ Church Cathedral
Chamber music and solo recital
 
April 18, 2013, noon
Discovery Week; Christ Church Cathedral
Chamber music and solo recital
 
April 18, 2013, 7:30pm
Discovery Week; Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center
Song Recital
 
April 19, 2013, noon
Discovery Week; Christ Church Cathedral
Chamber music and solo recital
 
April 19, 2013, 8pm
Discovery Week; Hilbert Circle Theatre
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
Gala Finals
 
April 20, 2013, 8pm
Discovery Week; Hilbert Circle Theatre
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
Gala Finals and naming of the winner:
2013 Christel DeHaan Classical Fellow of the American Pianists Association
 
April 25, 1pm
New York, NY
Trinity Church (Wall St & Broadway)
Concerts at One
Performances by all competition pianists (including winner named April 20): Sean Chen, 
Sara Daneshpour, Claire Huangci, Andrew Staupe, Eric Zuber
New York premieres of APA-commissioned works
 
 
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