French-born, Polish-raised star pianist Dr. Graciella Kowalczyk has appeared in concerts and recitals as a soloist in over fifteen countries. From early appearances personally connected to Chopin at his birthplace, Żelazowa Wola, her performances include the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, Poland; Sergei Rachmaninov Concert Hall in Moscow, Russia; Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria; Bellini Conservatory in Palermo, Italy; Kölner Philharmonic in Köln, Germany; Ed Landreth Auditorium in Fort Worth, TX and further across North and South America and Asia. Her students continue to win prizes and accolades across the United States.

She has won top prizes in many competitions all over the world, and was the recipient of awards from the Louis-Spohr Forderverein, Germany; Internationale Stiftung fur Music, Switzerland; Lili Kraus Scholarship, Fort Worth, TX, and Mu Phi Epsilon, International Music Fraternity, Kansas City, MO; Kansas City Musical Club, Kansas City, MO., and received her doctorate in piano performance from the University of Kansas.

Dr. Kowalczyk has studied with many of the greatest pianists and musicians of our time including D.Bashkirov, R.Buchbinder, S.Dorenski, J.Feghali, R.Goode, S.Ioudenitch, N.Lugansky, H.Martina, D.Mirska, W.Nabore, P.Nersessian, J.Owings, A.Pisarev, J.Perry, E.Pridonoff, Z.Zohar, and J.Winerock.

Recent highlights include cooperation with modern composers including an award-winning recording of fugues and postludes by Canadian-Armenian composer Ashot Ariyan available on the RMN Classical label. She is also the Director of the exclusive Autumn Artist Interactive, an intensive Nashville-area crossover camp for pop and country artists with vocal superstar coach Brett Manning and legendary guitarist Mario DaSilva.

In addition to her roles as President of the Board and Artistic Director of the Nashville International Chopin Piano Competition, jury chairman of the NICPC, and Director of Music City Chopin, she maintains a very active performance schedule as soloist, including numerous upcoming engagements in Europe, South America, and Asia with orchestra. Graciella is also the Artistic Director of the Chopin in Cyprus International Music Festival featuring some of the greatest Chopin interpreters of our time.

In her spare time, Graciella volunteers in her community by giving free piano lessons and helping students thrive.

Dubbed “a major artist” by the Miami Herald and a “quiet maverick” by the Daily Telegraph, pianist Alexander Korsantia has been praised for the “clarity of his technique, richly varied tone and dynamic phrasing” (Baltimore Sun), and a “piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist” (Calgary Sun). The Boston Globe found his interpretation of his signature piece, Pictures at an Exhibition, to be “a performance that could annihilate all others one has heard.” And the Birmingham Post wrote: “his intensely responsive reading was shot through with a vein of constant fantasy, whether musing or mercurial.” Ever since winning Gold Medal at the Artur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and the First Prize at the Sidney International Piano Competition, Korsantia’s career has taken him to many of the world’s major concert halls, collaborating with renowned artists such as Vadim Repin, Christoph Eschenbach, Gianandrea Noseda, Valery Gergiev, Paavo Järvi, Dan Ettinger and Carlos Prieto among others with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Kirov Orchestra, RAI Orchestra in Turin, The City of Birmingham Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Israel Philharmonic and the Far Cry. He often appears at Boston’s Jordan Hall with his colleagues Miriam Fried, Kim Kashkashian, Paul Biss and Laurence Lesser in chamber music concerts. Mr. Korsantia has been on the jury panel of many international piano competitions included the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and Cleveland International Piano Competition.

In the current and coming seasons Mr. Korsantia performs Prokofiev’s Third Concerto with Boston Philharmonic, Akron Symphony and Xiamen Philharmonic, Rachmaninoff’s Third with Israel Symphony, Prokofiev’s Second with Stuttgart Philharmoniker and Telavi Festival in Georgia, Beethoven’s Fourth with Israel Philharmonic and Haifa Symphony, Chopin Second with Jerusalem Symphony, Israel Chamber Orchestra and Ingolstadt Chamber Orchestra. With The Far Cry chamber group he performed Galina Ustvolskaya’s Piano Concerto in Boston and Tbilisi, Georgia. In addition, he plays recitals at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, National Concert Hall in Taipei, the Walnut Hill School, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Greenfield Village (Michigan), Blaibach, Germany, Lodz (Poland), Jordan Hall in Boston, Cincinnati Conservatory, Shanghai Concert Hall, Gulangyu Concert Hall as well as extensive recital tours in Israel and Georgia. He will perform Shostakovich’s First Concerto with New Orleans Philharmonic as well as Rachmaninoff’s Second with Edmonton Symphony. He will record the latter with Stuttgart Philharmonic Dan Ettinger conducting.

Bel Air Music and Piano Classics are among the recording labels Mr. Korsantia has worked with. The most recent release is a collection of Beethoven (Eroica Variations), Rachmaninoff (Chopin Variations), and Copland (Piano Variations). His solo piano transcription of Ravel’s La valse has been published by Sikorski Musikverlage in 2018.

Alexander Korsantia was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. He later moved with his family to the United States. In 1999, he was awarded one of the most prestigious national awards, the Order of Honor, bestowed on him by then-President Eduard Shevardnadze. He is a recipient of the Golden Wing award (2015) and Georgia’s National State Prize (1997). Korsantia resides in Boston where he is a Professor of Piano on the faculty of the New England Conservatory. Mr. Korsantia is the artistic adviser of the annual music festival “From Easter to Ascension” in Georgia.

A prize-winner of The Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano (1991), as well as F. Liszt’s International Piano Competition in Utrecht (1992) –  so far, the only Polish winner of this prestigious competition. Zbigniew Raubo is also a laureate of The Karol Szymanowski Competition in Łodź (1987).

He graduated with honors from The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, where he mastered his skills under the guidance of famous teacher Prof. Andrzej Jasiński and later became his university assistant. Currently, he holds the title of Professor while teaching at Academy in Katowice.

Zbigniew Raubo has performed with all philharmonic orchestras in Poland (including Sinfonia Varsovia and NOSPR). He has over 30 compositions for piano and orchestra in his repertoire. He has performed at major music festivals, such, as The Chopin Festival in Vancouver, “Poolse Meesters” in Belgium, Campos do Jordao Festival in Brazil, Duszniki International Piano Festival, and Festiwal Pianistyki Polskiej in Słupsk.

He has recorded a number of compositions for phonographic companies in Poland and abroad, among others for: the Japanese division of Deutsche Grammophon,  RCA as well as DUX, and Żuk Records.

As a chamber musician, he has had a chance to collaborate with: The Silesian String Quartet, The Wilanów Quartet, and The Camerata Quartet, but also with outstanding soloists, such as Bartłomiej Nizioł and Urszula Kryger. He is active pedagogically; besides his responsibilities at The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, he also gives various masterclasses for piano students and works as a consultant for music schools. As a Jury member, he participated in The Polish Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, International Chopin Competition in ASIA, and Paderewski International Piano Competition in Bydgoszcz.

Among his students, there are winners of various musical competitions, among others: The International Liszt Piano Competition in Wrocław, The Liszt Competition in Parma, The International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, but also The Polish Piano Festival in Słupsk, Karol Szymanowski International Competition in Katowice and many others.

Born and raised in Foggia, Italy, Antonio Pompa-Baldi won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 1999 and embarked on a career that continues to extend across five continents. A top prize winner at the 1998 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition of Paris, Pompa-Baldi also won a silver medal at the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Pompa-Baldi appears at the world’s major concert venues including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Milan’s Sala Verdi, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Shanghai’s Grand Theatre, and Paris’ Salle Pleyel, to name a few.

He has collaborated with leading conductors including Hans Graf, James Conlon, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Theodore Kuchar, Benjamin Zander, Louis Lane, and Keith Lockhart. He has performed with ensembles and colleagues such as the Takács String Quartet, trumpeter Alison Balsom, cellist Sharon Robinson, Juilliard Quartet violinist Areta Zhulla, and principals of The Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, and New York Philharmonic, among others.

With a concerto repertoire including more than 60 works, Pompa-Baldi has performed cycles of all the Rachmaninoff piano concertos, the five Beethoven piano concertos, and both Brahms piano concertos, among many other mainstream works.

He also loves performing new scores, and lesser-known ones, from premiering piano concertos by Italian composers Roberto Piana and Luca Moscardi, to resurrecting the early A minor Respighi Piano Concerto, the Howard Ferguson Concerto and the Cecile Chaminade Konzertstück, to name a few. Pompa-Baldi has played recitals in most major venues over the world, attaining the same balance between featuring beloved works from the standard repertoire, and showcasing new or unjustly neglected masterpieces. Among recent stops on his tours, he performed in Vienna, Austria; Malaga, Spain; Nancy, France; New York; Cape Town, South Africa; Husum Festival, Germany; Duszniki Chopin Festival, Poland. Just before the pandemic, he toured China, playing in Beijing, Wuhan, Nanjing, Dalian, Guangzhou, as well as the Lang Lang festivals in Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

Mr. Pompa-Baldi has recorded over 30 CDs to date, for various labels including Centaur Records, Steinway, Brilliant Classics, Harmonia Mundi, TwoPianists, and Azica. Among them, the complete piano and chamber music works of Grieg, theJosef Rheinberger Piano Sonatas, the complete Hummel Piano Sonatas, and CDs dedicated to Brahms, Schumann, Liszt, Respighi, and Rachmaninoff.

For the Steinway label, Pompa-Baldi recorded a disc of songs by Francis Poulenc and Edith Piaf, arranged for solo piano, to commemorate the 50th year of the passing of both French musical icons, as well as a CD titled “Napoli”, which features new piano versions of famous Neapolitan songs.

His latest releases feature Concertos for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra by Mendelssohn, Haydn, and Hummel, as well as a CD of newly composed Opera Fantasies on La Bohème and Carmen, by Roberto Piana.

The Steinway label also recently released Pompa-Baldi’s piano transcription of the Respighi B minor Violin Sonata, The score has been published by the Japanese publishing house Muse Press.

Antonio Pompa-Baldi is a Steinway Artist since 2003. Pompa-Baldi is on the faculty at CIM as Artist-in-Residence and Distinguished Professor of Piano.

He is often invited to judge international piano competitions such as the Cleveland, Hilton Head, E-Competition (Minneapolis), BNDES Rio de Janeiro, and Edward Grieg (Bergen), among many others. He serves as president of the jury and artistic advisor for the San Jose International Piano Competition since 2006.

From 2009 to 2012, Pompa-Baldi lead the Manuel Rueda program in Santo Domingo, working with Fundación por la Musica, mentoring young Dominican pianists.

In 2015, Pompa-Baldi founded the Todi International Music Masters festival, of which he is artistic director and faculty member. This summer festival takes place every August in the beautiful Italian town of Todi. It features 15 concerts in 15 days, masterclasses with internationally renowned faculty members, and students from all over the world.

His students have been prizewinners in important competitions such as Marguerite Long, Hilton Head, Isang Yun, and Gina Bachauer. He is regularly invited to teach masterclasses in countless universities, music schools, and festivals in the US and all over the world. He holds honorary professorships from the Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang Conservatories, as well as several other institutions.

The Nashville International Chopin Piano Competition is delighted to welcome him back to serve on the jury a second time, having been a member of the 2023 NICPC jury prior to this.

https://www.pompabaldi.com/

Natalia Troull began studying piano in her native St. Peterburg. She later moved to Moscow where she graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. Among her teachers were professors Y. Zak, M. Voskresensky and T. Kravchenko.

Her performance career was launched when she won first prize at the Belgrade International Piano Competition in 1983. However, the biggest success came in 1986 she won the silver medal at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition. The public was swept off its feet by her interpretation of composers such as Schubert and Stravinsky. Her “Petroushka” suite left an everlasting impression on the public and critics alike.

In 1993, Natalia Troull was awarded the Grand Prix at the Piano Masters Competition in Monte-Carlo (where only winners of international competitions are accepted as participants).

Natalia Troull’s complete control and fantastic virtuosity place her in a class of her own, and she is in great demand as a performer all over the world. Among the distinguished orchestras with whom she has performed are the London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Monte-Carlo, Tonhalle Symphony Orchestra and all of the major Russian Symphony Orchestras.

Natalia Troull has also played with such conductors as Raphael Frubeck de Burgos, Raymond Leppard, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Eri Klas, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Vassily Sinaisky, Yuri Temirkanov and many others.

Her repertoire includes over 50 concertos, of which the Tchaikovsky concerto has proved to be the most popular, the pianist having performed the work on over one hundred occasions in the world’s leading concert halls. Her most brilliant performances of the Tchaikovsky concerto were in Hollywood Bowl under Eri Klas and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and in Suntory Hall with Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Koizumi Kazuhiro (1998-99 season).

Natalia’s performances today are remarkable for her total absorption in the music her unique stage presence and technical mastery in presenting a wide repertoire of works.

Natalia Troull is frequently invited to teach to the U.S.A., Japan, Italy, Germany and South America. She is Professor at the Moscow Tchaikovky Concervatory. She is permanently a jury member of many international piano competitions.

Recordings:

- Prokofiev – The Complete Piano Sonatas under the “DML Classic” label (Japan);
- Chopin recital including two Sonatas, the Fantasy and Mazurkas;
- Schubert recital including the Wanderer-Fantasy, Impromptus op.90 and Schubert-Liszt Song transcriptions.
- Tchaikovski - The Seasons op.37bis, Children`s Album op.39
- Debussy & Chopin - Etudes
- Schumann - 3 violin sonatas with Alexey Lundin

“His performance brought a veritable roar of approval from the audience,” wrote the Irish Times, after Pavel Nersessian received the 1st Prize in the GPA Dublin International Piano Competition in 1991. Being one of the most remarkable pianists of his generation in Russia, he is known for his ability to play equally convincingly in the whole palette of the piano repertoire. He won prizes in the Beethoven Competition in Vienna in 1985, the Paloma O’Shea Competition in Santander, and the Tokyo Competition.

Nersessian was a pupil of the famous Central Music School of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, where his teacher was Yu. Levin. Later he was a student of the Conservatoire under Prof. S. Dorensky. Upon graduating from the Conservatoire in 1987 with maximum marks he was invited to join the faculty.

Pavel Nersessian has been touring Russia and surrounding states from the age of eight, and has given performances in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Cannes, Leipzig, Vienna, Budapest, Madrid, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Dublin, Muenchen, Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, Belgrade, Cairo, Kiev, Beijing and many other cities.

Mr. Nersessian, by special invitation from the Kirov and the Perm Ballet, performed solo part in Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial based on the music of Tchaikovsky’s 2nd Piano Concerto with performances in the Kirov, Bolshoi, Chatelet and Covent Garden. He also played a solo part in J. Robbins’ ballet “The concert, or The Perils of Everybody” on the music of F. Chopin.

He is known for his collaboration with chamber music groups and other musicians, such as Borodin and Glinka Quartets, National Symphony Orchestra in Russia, Thomas Sanderling, Tugan Sokhiev, Alexandr Chernushenko, Valeriy Polyansky, Mikhail Agrest, Pascal Moragues, Julius Milkis, Evgeny Petrov, Pavel Kogan, Abel Perreira, Benjamin Schmid, Stepan Yakovich, Ani Kavafian, Andrei Gridchuk, Alena Baeva, Zlatomir Fung, Filip Kopachevsky, Yana Ivanilova, Nina Kogan, Mikhail Bereznitsky, Maxim Emelyanychev, Diana Vishneva, Philippe Cassard, Alexandre Lazarev, Gaik Kazazyan, Lukas Geniushas, Richard Young, Valentin Uriupin, Itamar Zorman, Yulia Lezhneva and many others. He has recorded numerous disks with compositions of Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Shostakovich, and he has given masterclasses in the USA, Russia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Korea, Brazil, and Japan.

In 2005 he became a merited artist of the Russian Federation.

For more than 25 years P. Nersessian assisted his teacher, professor S. Dorensky. He has worked with such talented pupils as N. Lugansky, D. Matsuev, V. Rudenko, O. Kern, A. Shtarkman, Yu. Stadler, I. Tasovats, F. Amirov, M. Amara, A. Dossin, V. Igoshina, A. Mamriev, V. Korchinskaya-Kogan, S. Simonian, Z. Chochieva, G. Chaidze, N. Pisareva, A. Sychev, F. Kopachevsky, P. Kolesnikov, A. Tarasevich-Nikolaev, L. Bernsdorf, P. Elisha and many others.

Pavel Nersessian served as a jury member in many international piano competitions: Dublin, Hamamatsu, Sendai, Maria Canals in Barcelona, Hilton Head, Almaty, Valencia and other international piano competitions. He was a jury member in the 2023 Nashville International Chopin Piano Competition and is a faculty member of Nashville Chopin's "Chopin in Cyprus" International Music Festival and Competition.

In 2013 he started to work as a professor of piano in Boston university.

Jerome Reed, the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Piano at Lipscomb University, is a master pedagogue who is an inaugural member of Steinway & Sons Teacher Hall of Fame. His students have won many competitions, including first place in the Nashville International Piano Competition, Tennessee Music Teachers Association competitions, and numerous other auditions. His student piano trio placed third at the Music Teachers National Association Competition in New York in 2012. He has served on the faculty of the InterHarmony Music Festival in Italy and the East/West International Piano Festival in China. He is also chair of the music division of the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts. He is a frequent adjudicator at local, state, and national competitions. 

He has given recitals and masterclasses throughout the U.S. and in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China, Poland, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy, England, Hungary, and Uruguay. His performances in the U.S. and abroad of Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata, incorporated a pre-recital lecture, a multimedia presentation, and readings from Ives’s Essays Before a Sonata. A champion of contemporary music, his recordings include works for piano and tape for Capstone Records, sonatas for flute and piano with Deanna Little, and Elizabeth Austin’s Rose Sonata. He has received several awards, including the Distinguished Service Award from the Tennessee Music Teachers Association as well as the TMTA Teacher of the Year. In 2024 he received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at Lipscomb University. In 2025 he was installed as an MTNA Foundation Fellow.

He holds the D.M.A. and M.M. in piano performance from The Catholic University of America, where he was a student of Béla Börzörményi-Nagy. He also studied with Jeanne-Marie Darré at the Conservatoire de Musique de Nice and coached with Yvonne Loriod in Paris.

Hailed by the Classica Magazine as a "pianist of magnetic presence", Ingmar Lazar is internationally praised for his deep and moving performances, as well as for his brilliant control and stupendous technique. He has firmly established himself as one of the leading French musicians of his generation. 

Ingmar Lazar performs in the world’s most prestigious halls such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Herkulessaal in Munich, International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, Verdi Hall of the Milan Conservatory, Rudolfinum in Prague, La Seine Musicale in Paris, Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest, Great Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, and the Charles Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv to name a few. He is regularly invited to many distinguished festivals including Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, La Roque d'Anthéron International Piano Festival, Grafenegg Festival, Colmar International Festival, Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier, Festival Chopin in Paris, Festival Les Piano Folies in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, Póvoa de Varzim International Music Festival, Sant Pere de Rodes Music Festival, and the Gotthard Klassik-Festival.

He collaborates with conductors such as Vladimir Spivakov, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Mykola Diadiura, Mathieu Herzog, Julien Chauvin, Anna Duczmal-Mróz, Marko Hribernik, Peter Vizard among many others, and performs with orchestras including the National Philharmonic of Russia, the Moscow Virtuosi, the Orchestre Pasdeloup, the Orchestre Lamoureux, the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra, the Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra, L'Ensemble Appassionato, Le Concert de la Loge, and the Lviv Philharmonic Academic Symphony Orchestra to name a few.

Ingmar Lazar is also a dedicated chamber musician, and shares the stage with Pierre Amoyal, Giuseppe Gibboni, Danielle Laval, Jean-Claude Pennetier, Christoph Seybold, Igor Tchetuev, the Quatuor Hermès, and the Vision String Quartet. 

His critically acclaimed discography includes a Schubert recital (Wanderer Fantasie and Sonata D.959) released in 2017 on the Lyrinx label, which received a five-star rating from the Classica Magazine, and was awarded with "France Musique's Choice". A Beethoven recital (Bagatelles op. 33, Sonatas op. 81a "Les Adieux" and op. 111) recorded live at the National Theatre in Marseille "La Criée" was released in 2019 on the same label, receiving once more a five-star rating from the Classica Magazine. His latest recording released in 2023 on Hänssler Classic devoted to works of César Franck received fabulous press critics, and was awarded with a “five” from Diapason, as well as with a five-star rating from the Classica Magazine. Ingmar Lazar recorded also several CDs for the Suoni e Colori label including works by Jean-Philippe Rameau and, in duo with Alexandre Brussilovsky, works by Jean Françaix, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, and Efrem Podgaits. As a defender of contemporary music, he recorded several works of Pascal Arnault for Triton/Hortus.

Born in France in 1993, Ingmar Lazar made his debut at the age of 6 at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. Prizewinner of several international competitions, he is the recipient of the Tabor Foundation Piano Award at the Verbier Festival in 2013. He was also named laureate of the Safran Foundation for Music, France in 2016. In 2020 he became prizewinner of the Ateliers Médicis, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture. Ingmar Lazar is a Steinway Artist.

A former student of Valery Sigalevitch and Alexis Golovin, Ingmar Lazar continued his studies with Vladimir Krainev and Bernd Goetzke at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover. Thereafter he attended the International Piano Academy Lake Como and the Conservatory of the Italian Switzerland (Lugano) as a Theo Lieven scholar, where he studied with Dmitri Bashkirov, Malcolm Bilson, Fou Ts'ong, and Stanislav Ioudenitch. He received his Master's and Postgraduate degree from the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg in the class of Pavel Gililov. He also completed a Postgratudate degree with Elisso Virsaladze at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, and was a member of the Philippe Jaroussky Music Academy. 

Since 2016, Ingmar Lazar has been the founder and artistic director of the Festival du Bruit qui Pense, located in Louveciennes in the Yvelines, in north-central France. He is also the president of the "Association des amis du Château de Commarin" (Burgundy), where he serves as artistic director of its cultural season. Ingmar Lazar has been named in 2023 artistic director of the festival "Fugues Pianistiques" taking place in the city of Chelles in Seine-et-Marne.

Kristian Klefstad is Associate Professor of Piano and Coordinator of the Keyboard area at Belmont University, where he teaches piano, piano pedagogy, piano literature and class piano, and directs the Belmont Piano Invitational summer keyboard program.

Dr. Klefstad performs solo and collaborative music throughout the United States, and also presents lecture-demonstrations and papers at national and regional conferences, including the College Music Society and WVU’s Intersection of Jazz and Classical Music Festival. Recently, he performed as a soloist with the Western Kentucky University Orchestra, and has been guest artist at the Lamar University Piano Festival in Beaumont, TX, and the Maverick Piano Festival in Omaha, NE. Dr. Klefstad served on the jury for the inaugural Nashville International Chopin Competition in 2023, and the Knoxville International Piano Festival and Competition in 2024.

Dr. Klefstad is actively involved in regional, state, and national organizations devoted to teaching music. In addition to many officer roles in the Southern Chapter of the College Music Society, including President, (2015-17) he has served as President, Vice-President, and Programs Chair of the Nashville Area Music Teachers Association, and Coordinated the Young Artist Achievement Awards 2019-2024.

Nino Ushikishvili started playing piano at the age of four. A few years later she entered the Z. Paliashvili Tbilisi Central Music School for Gifted Children. In 1995 she graduated with honors from the V. Sarajishvili Tbilisi Conservatoire and in 1997 she completed postgraduate studies at the same conservatoire under the guidance of Professor Vanda Shiukashvili.

In 1998, Nino received a full scholarship and continued her studies in the United States, where in 2004 she received her Artist Diploma at the Texas Christian University in Fort Worth (Texas, USA), and in 2005 Graduate Diploma with honors at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston (Massachusetts, USA). Her teachers at various times were Tamás Ungár, Joseph Banowets, and Alexander Korsantia.

Nino Ushikishvili is a prize winner of various piano competitions, among them the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Nina Wideman International Piano Competition in Shreveport, Louisiana, and the Hilton Head International Piano Competition in Hilton Head, South Carolina. She has participated in masterclasses with world-renowned musicians such as Leon Fleisher, Christopher Elton, Boris Petrushansky, Mikhail Voskresensky, Benedetto Lupo and others.

While studying in the United States, Nino regularly gave concerts in various cities, notably  performances in Washington, New York, Dallas, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Nino Ushikishvili has many years of teaching experience. Currently, she is on the faculty of the Music Academy of the University of Georgia and is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance at the Tbilisi State Conservatoire.

Nino is the Eurasia Live Auditions Director of the Nashville International Chopin Competition, responsible for organizing and administering auditions in Tbilisi, Georgia, and is a faculty member of Chopin in Cyprus.