Zeynep Ucbasaran, pianist, was born in Turkey, began music studies at age four at the Istanbul Conservatory, and has her Concert Artist Diploma from the Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest. After advanced studies at the Hochschule für Musik, Freiburg, Germany, she obtained her MA and DMA Degrees in Piano Performance from USC. Her honors include the American Liszt Society Award, and she was a prize-winner in the 1996 and 2000 Los Angeles Liszt Competitions. She has concertized in many countries, and has recorded for Eroica Records and Naxos International to critical acclaim; her discography includes the music of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, Scarlatti and Schubert, as well as twentieth-century composers such as Bernstein, Muczynski, and Saygun, and she has recently completed her project of recording the complete set of Mozart’s Variations for Piano. Her performance of works that Liszt played in Istanbul in 1847 was broadcast by the European Broadcasting Union to all of Europe in 2011; a compilation of these selections was released in 2013 under the title, Liszt in Istanbul. Dr. Ucbasaran has given master classes and lecture-recitals throughout the U.S. and in Brazil, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, has toured with pianist Sergio Gallo, violinist Cihat Askin, and performed with the Trio Troy and the Smyrna Woodwind Quintet. Further information can be found on her website: www.zupiano.com.

Miriam Arichea, piano, is active as both musician and attorney, and earned her JD Degree from Duke University School of Law. She has been featured soloist in annual concerts with the Channel Islands Chamber Orchestra (CHICO), including performances of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, Dvorak’s Piano Concerto, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations, and has been pianist in numerous chamber music ensembles throughout Southern California. She is currently Deputy District Attorney for Ventura County.

MARIUSZ ADAMCZAK, pianist, has concertized in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Republic of Moldava, Morocco, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Uzbekistan and the United States, and has been prize winner in piano competitions in Greece, Italy, Poland, and Romania. As concerto soloist, he has been featured with major European orchestras, and as chamber music pianist he has appeared with the Camerata, Consonante, and Gaudeamus Quartets, the Cracow Royal Quartet, and the Camerata Vistula and Varsovia Ensembles. He has been invited to present concerts at national and international festivals, including the “Fryderyk Chopin Music Festivals” in Ghent (Belgium) and in Gaming (Austria) the “Forum of Young Pianists” in Darmstadt (Germany), the “Young Pianists Interpretations” in the Chopin Festival in Valldemossa (Mallorca), and the “Floralia Music Festival in Warsaw (Poland), and has recorded live studio concerts for the BBC and Polish Radio.

Born in Poland, Mr. Adamczak graduated from the Fryderyk Chopin State School of Music in Warsaw, receiving the Artistic Scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and Arts, graduated with distinction from the Cracow Academy of Music, and also studied at the National University of Music in Bucharest, Romania. In 2014 he instituted his private piano class, from which his students have been awarded prizes in national and international piano competitions.

Pianist Robert Cassidy has performed in solo and collaborative recitals and with orchestra throughout the United States and Canada, and has received critical acclaim for his performances and recordings of both solo piano repertoire and chamber music. He received his Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Piano Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Solomon Mikowsky, Constance Keene, and Marc Silverman, and subsequently studied with Menahem Pressler at Indiana University. He holds a Doctor of Arts Degree in Piano Chamber Music and Accompanying/Piano Performance from Ball State University, where he studied with Robert Palmer.

Dr. Cassidy has appeared in such venues as New York City’s Merkin and Weill Halls, the Lyceum in Alexandria (VA), Santa Barbara City College (CA), and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada. He has also been presented on radio stations WFMT in Chicago (Dame Myra Hess Series), WCLV and WCPN in Cleveland, and WNYC in New York (Around New York). A strong advocate of contemporary music, Dr. Cassidy has premiered works by the American composers David Noon and Keith Fitch. He is the pianist in the Cleveland-based Almeda Trio and regularly performs chamber music with members of The Cleveland Orchestra.

He has served on the keyboard faculties at Cleveland State University and The Cleveland Music Settlement, and is also a former faculty member of New York University, the University of Indianapolis, the 92nd Street Y School of Music (New York), Marian College (Indiana), Queens College Preparatory Division (New York), and Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI), among others.

An active and highly sought-after teacher and chamber music coach, Dr. Cassidy is in demand for master classes, workshops and lectures, private teaching, and adjudication. He has maintained a private studio at The Music Academy of the West since August, 2014.

Dr. John Ballerino, pianist, grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico and is fluent in Spanish. He holds a DMA in Collaborative Arts from the University of Southern California, where he also studied Spanish and Latin American literature as part of his doctoral program.

His principal teachers include Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Brooks Smith, Alan Smith, George Katz, and Frank Wiens. He is a five-time winner of the Koldofsky Graduate Fellowship in Accompanying, and twice was the winner of the Hans Schiff Memorial Scholarship for excellence in chamber music (USC). He has also twice received scholarships to the Music Academy of the West (Santa Barbara). Master classes and private coaching have enabled him to work with Martin Katz, Giorgio Tozzi, Evelyn Lear, William Parker, Martial Singher, Dalton Baldwin, Roger Vignoles, Elly Ameling, Marilyn Horne, and Martin Isepp.

An accomplished speaker and performer of Spanish and Latin American music, Dr. Ballerino lectures and performs throughout the United States and the Caribbean. Since 1999, John has been the principal coach and Assistant Music Director for ten different Zarzuela productions at the Jarvis Conservatory in Napa, California. He has also served as a Spanish diction coach for productions by the Los Angeles Opera and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. In 2007, John was on staff at Los Angeles Opera as diction coach and pianist for the Zarzuela Luisa Fernanda, featuring Plácido Domingo in the lead role. In 2010 John was the assistant conductor and Spanish coach for Rio de Sangre, a world premier opera by Don Davis that was produced by the Florentine Opera (Milwaukee).

John is a Continuing Lecturer of Collaborative Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There he teaches Spanish Diction as well as Song and Operatic Literature. He is the former Chorus Master, Principal Pianist, and Assistant Conductor for Opera Santa Barbara and has frequently been on the music staffs of the Los Angeles, Florentine (Milwaukee) Utah Festival, Fresno, and Sarasota Opera Companies as an Assistant Conductor and Repetiteur. John is currently a Guest Lecturer of Spanish Opera at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Leslie Cain, pianist, completed her undergraduate studies at the Manhattan School of Music, studying with André-Michel Schub. She also holds a BA Degree in Philosophy from California State University, Los Angeles, from which she graduated at age 18 as part of the school’s Early Entrance Program, and her honors include First Prizes in the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition. By invitation of the Weill Music Institute, she performed in a master class conducted by Richard Goode in the inaugural season of the Resnick Education Wing at Carnegie Hall, and has also participated in master classes with Jeremy Denk, Lynn Harrell, Gilbert Kalish, and Yo-Yo Ma, as well as the Danish and Kronos String Quartets. She was a participant in the 2016 Ecole d’Art Américaines, the renowned music festival held each summer at the Chateau de Fontainebleau, France, and her other recent appearances include the Appaloosa Festival in Front Royal, Virginia, adding classical music to their lineup of rock and bluegrass performers. Leslie is currently a DMA candidate at UCSB, studying with Paul Berkowitz, and a fellowship member of the UCSB Young Artist Piano Quartet.

Egle Januleviciute, pianist, was born in Lithuania and holds the Diploma with Highest Honors from the Lithuanian Academy of Music, Vilnius, MM Degree from Bowling Green State University. and DMA Degree from UCSB. She has toured throughout Europe and the former Soviet Union, won several international piano competitions, and has recorded for Eroica, Hurstwood Farm Music Studios, Opus One, and Tembras Studios. Dr. Januleviciute currently teaches at Westmont College and Cate School, as well as privately.

Ilya Sinaisky, pianist, was born in the Ukraine and emigrated to Israel in 1990. Following undergraduate studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, he earned his MM Degree from Tel Aviv University and his DMA Degree from the University of Maryland. Prizewinner at the Darius Milhaud Performance Competition, he was awarded the Robert McCoy Prize for Excellence in Collaborative Piano at the University of Maryland. Dr. Sinaisky has been a collaborative piano faculty member at Colorado State University, Heifetz International Institute for Strings, and the Aspen Music Festival, and currently teaches piano at Rubin Conservatory (Haifa) and is pianist for the Israeli Opera.

Paul Berkowitz has recorded the complete Piano Sonatas of Schubert for Meridian Records to worldwide acclaim. He was described by the London Sunday Times as being “in the royal class of Schubert interpreters” and his CD recordings of the Last Three Schubert Piano Sonatas were included among the same newspaper’s Records of the Year. His recording of Schumann’s Kreisleriana was selected by BBC Radio Record Review as the best of all available recordings. He also released a series of three CD recordings of Brahms Piano Music. BBC Music Magazine reviewed Vol. II commenting, “…praise to Meridian, which has in the Canadian pianist Paul Berkowitz an artist who isn’t shy of taking on the kind of repertoire traditionally the preserve of more internationally high-profile artists. Rightly so, for he has a voice, a musicality, a bigness of pianism distinctively his own…his integrity is commanding, his stylistic authority convincing and his refusal merely to play the notes impressive.”

Mr. Berkowitz more recently recorded the Schubert Impromptus, Moments Musicaux, and other repertoire as the final two volumes of his 9-CD cycle of major works for piano by Schubert for Meridian, which he began in 1984. The Guardian of London noted: “A sparkling technique allied to a clear sense of line make these recordings particularly special.” All earlier volumes have been re-issued along with the two new recordings as Schubert Piano Works, in nine volumes. More recently he has taken an interest in the piano works of the French composer Francis Poulenc, several of which he will be recording for Meridian in the next year.

Mr. Berkowitz, a native of Montreal, Canada, is a graduate of McGill University and of the Curtis Institute, where he studied with Rudolf Serkin. He lived in Britain for 20 years appearing frequently at the Queen Elizabeth and Wigmore Halls and on the BBC, as a soloist with major orchestras in Britain and Canada and at music festivals in Belgium, Denmark, England, Scotland, France, Italy and Spain. Mr. Berkowitz left the Guildhall School of Music in London, where he had been a professor since 1975, to join the music faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1993, where he is Professor of Piano and served as Chair of the Department of Music 2007-12. He has been invited to present master classes at major conservatories, universities and festivals, and his students have won prizes in numerous competitions, including the BBC Young Musician of the Year (Thomas Adès), the International Piano Competition Palma d’Oro in Italy, the Bradshaw and Buono International Competition in New York, and the Los Angeles Liszt Competition and have gone on to have concert and academic careers of their own in Europe, North America and Asia.