Thank you for your interest in graduate study at the Eastman School of Music. Please take a moment to watch this short video and learn what several current Eastman grad students think about their decision to study at Eastman. In addition, feel free to peruse our the Alumni Gallery and see what some of our alumni have been up to since they completed their graduate study.
The Eastman Advantage:
VIDEO
Alumni
Julie Scott is Assistant Professor of Music Education at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. She earned a Ph.D. from Eastman School of Music in 2010, where she was Assistant Professor of Music Education (Teaching) for one year. Besides teaching at SMU, she currently serves as president of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association and as director of the 100-voice Lewisville ISD 5th Grade Honor Choir. Prior to teaching at the college level, Dr. Scott taught elementary music in Texas schools for 17 years.
Dr. Scott is Director of Music Educators Workshops at SMU, and she has taught summer Orff Schulwerk courses to adults at seven universities over the past 16 years. She has presented conference sessions and workshops for MENC, AOSA, OAKE, and to numerous state MEAs, school districts and Orff chapters throughout the US. Dr. Scott has presented sessions internationally at conferences in China (ISME), Italy (ISME), Thailand (CMS), and Australia (IKS).
“From meetings with friends and colleagues in the Main Hall, to the classes in Eastman Theater and Sibley Library, to study sessions at Java’s, I have so many good memories of my time at Eastman. I knew I would enjoy the music education classes–and I did!–but I never dreamed I would be so enlightened by classes in musicology, music theory, and research. Each of my professors led me to a new level of thinking and learning. I’ll always be grateful I went to Eastman for my PhD.”
Alumni
John W. Parks IV is Associate Professor of Percussion at The Florida State University. He has performed with the Kansas City, Alabama, Key West, Jacksonville, and Tallahassee Symphony Orchestras, and appeared as a performer/clinician at the 2009 Thailand Brass and Percussion Conference in Bangkok, National Public Radio, the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic, Percussive Arts Society International Conventions, NACWPI, and state MENC conventions, in addition to PAS Days of Percussion and guest artist residencies across the United States. Parks also leads the acclaimed FSU Percussion Ensemble, winner of the 2007 Percussive Arts Society International Percussion Ensemble Competition, and is currently the Second-Vice President of the Percussive Arts Society. He won a university-wide FSU Teaching Award for the 2005-2006 school year and recently released FSU Percussion Ensemble: Volume One, which has received unanimous critical praise.
“Not a day goes by that I do not rely on my training from the Eastman School–whether it be something I remember from a class with Steve Laitz or David Headlam, playing under Donald Hunsberger, or working with John Beck. I am so proud to be part of the Eastman family, and it is an honor to see my former students from FSU joining the family as well.”
Alumni
Tami Petty recently made her Lincoln Center debut as inaugural recipient of the Sorel Emerging Artist Award singing Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. The New York Times praised her “powerful soprano” and Classical Music Network said, “such a beauty and purity of tone is so rare that I could only listen in ethereal pleasure.”
Five-time recipient of the Merola Opera Program Career Grant from the San Francisco Opera Center, Ms. Petty has also received awards from the Sorel Organization, the Richard Tucker Foundation, the Marilyn Horne Foundation, the Connecticut Opera Guild, the Lotte Lenya Competition and the Jessie Kneisel German Lieder Competition. Ms. Petty attended the The Music Academy of the West and was a Young Artist with Cincinnati Opera, Chautauqua Opera and Central City Opera.
She has sung with many Eastman ensembles including Collegium Musicum, Music Nova, Eastman Chorale, and Eastman Opera Theater, among others. She has appeared locally with Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Rochester Oratorio Society, Rochester Bach Society, Publick Musick, Asbury First United Methodist Church and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. She currently lives in New York City pursuing a full-time singing career.
“From Carol Webber’s weekly studio class to assisting opera director Steven Daigle in Le Nozze di Figaro , from complicated student scheduling for Richard Pearlman to performing alongside improvisatory genius Paul O’Dette, from recording Savanarola’s Bonfire Songs with Renaissance scholar Patrick Macey to baptism by fire as a T.A. in voice, my wide-ranging and rich experiences at Eastman molded me into the musician I am today. I wouldn’t trade any of it! PS I still daydream about the amazingness of Sibley.”
Alumni
Kristian Bezuidenhout , born in 1979, began his studies in Australia, completed them at the Eastman School of Music (BM & MM) and now lives in London. His teachers have included Rebecca Penneys (piano), Malcolm Bilson (fortepiano), Arthur Haas (harpsichord) and Paul O’Dette (performance practice). At the age of 21, Bezuidenhout won the first prize and the audience prize in the Bruges Fortepiano Competition; in 2007 he was awarded the Erwin Bodky Prize.
Bezuidenhout has appeared as soloist with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Orchestre des Champs Elysées, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, English Concert, Concerto Köln, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Collegium Vocale Ghent in many instances as guest director; and with celebrated artists including Christopher Hogwood, Ton Koopman, Daniel Hope, Pieter Wispelwey, Isabelle Faust, Jean Guihen-Queyras and Carolyn Sampson.
In 2006, he was invited by Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the 18th Century to perform the complete late piano concertos of Mozart; this was followed by a cycle of the Beethoven piano concertos at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Bezuidenhout has appeared in the early music festivals of Barcelona, Boston, Bruges, St. Petersburg, Venice and Utrecht; the Tanglewood Festival, Mostly Mozart Lincoln Center, Salzburg Festival, Schleswig Holstein; and at halls including the Berlin and Köln Philharmonie, Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Vienna Konzerthaus and Suntory Hall.
Recordings for Harmonia Mundi include VOL 1 & 2 of a projected 9 volume series of the complete keyboard works of Mozart (Volume 1 was awarded a Diapason D’Or and Caecilia Prize); Mendelssohn and Mozart piano concertos with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra; and Schumann Dichterliebe with Mark Padmore. His recording of Beethoven violin sonatas with Viktoria Mullova (ONYX label) won an ICMA for the best chamber music album of 2011.
“My time at the Eastman School of Music was, without a doubt, the most important and influential of my life. There’s no question that the degrees offered here are among the richest and most comprehensive in the world; more importantly though, the sheer diversity of musical personalities I encountered during my undergraduate and graduate degrees had a dramatic effect on the shape of my career. My modern piano mentor, the wonderful Rebecca Penneys, was a constant throughout, encouraging me to explore and refine my experience with old instruments under the tutelage of Arthur Haas (harpsichord) and Malcolm Bilson (fortepiano); and it is was my extensive work with Paul O’Dette (performance practice and continuo playing) that finally made it clear to me that a life and career in early music was exactly what I had been dreaming of.
I am so grateful for the many doors that Eastman has opened and I remain convinced that it is one of the finest musical institutions of its kind.”
Alumni
Alan Pierson has been praised as “a young conductor of monstrous skill” by Newsday, “commanding” by the New York Times, and “gifted and electrifying” by the Boston Globe. He is the artistic director and conductor of Brooklyn Philharmonic and of Alarm Will Sound, which has been called “the future of classical music” by the New York Times and “a sensational force” with “powerful ideas about how to renovate the concert experience” by the New Yorker. Mr. Pierson has appeared as a guest conductor with the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Steve Reich Ensemble, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble ACJW, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the New World Symphony, and The Silk Road Project, among other ensembles. He is also Principal Conductor of the Dublin-based Crash Ensemble, and was a visiting faculty conductor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has collaborated with major composers and performers, including Yo Yo Ma, Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Michael Gordon, La Monte Young, and choreographers Christopher Wheeldon, Akram Khan and Elliot Feld. Mr. Pierson has recorded for Nonesuch Records, Cantaloupe Music, Sony Classical, and Sweetspot DVD.
Alumni
Praised by critics as “a diva of the piano” (Salt Lake City Tribune), “a mesmerizing risk taker” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) and “simply spectacular” (International Music Foundation, Chicago), Ukrainian-American pianist Marina Lomazov has established herself as one of the most passionate and charismatic performers on the concert scene today. Following prizes in the Cleveland International Piano Competition, William Kapell International Piano Competition, Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition and Hilton Head International Piano Competition, Ms. Lomazov has given performances throughout North America, South America, England, China, France, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, Japan and in most of the fifty states in the U.S. She is a member of the International Roster of Steinway Artists.
Before immigrating to the United States, Marina studied at the Kiev Conservatory where she became the youngest First Prize Winner of the All-Kiev Piano Competition. Ms. Lomazov holds degrees from the Juilliard School and the Eastman School of Music, the latter granting upon her the highly coveted Artist’s Certificate – an honor the institution had not bestowed upon a pianist for nearly two decades. Her principal teachers include Leonid Lazarevich Fundiler and the late Valery Sagaidachny in Ukraine and Natalya Antonova, Jerome Lowenthal, and Barry Snyder in the United States.
Recognized by The New York Times for her virtuosity and wit, Lomazov’s performances include recitals at Weill Hall, Merkin Hall and Le’ Poisson Rouge (New York), Symphony Hall and Steinway Hall (Boston), the Chicago Cultural Center and Los Angeles Museum of Art, performances at international music festivals including Chautauqua, Brevard, Hamamatsu (Japan), Burgos (Spain), Summer Evenings in Kiev (Ukraine) and Sulzbach-Rosenberg (Germany), and performances as soloist with orchestras including the Boston Pops, Rochester Philharmonic, Charleston Symphony, Chernigoff Symphony (Ukraine), and Bollington Festival Orchestra (U.K.) to name a few. Her most recent CD of the Piano Works of Rodion Shchedrin (Centaur) has been broadcast more than 50 times on WQXR in New York and the American Record Guide praised the recording for its “breathtaking virtuosity”. She has also recorded for the Albany, Innova and Arizona University labels.
Marina is the founder and artistic director of the Southeastern Piano Festival, one of the major cultural events in the Southeastern United States. The festival has been recognized for providing an outstanding training platform for young pianists and presenting both celebrated and upcoming artists. Alumni of the festival have been awarded prizes in numerous international piano competitions including the Gilmore Young Artist Award.
Together with her husband Joseph Rackers, Lomazov also performs with the Lomazov/Rackers piano duo. In 2005, the Lomazov/Rackers duo was awarded Second Prize at the Sixth Ellis Competition for Duo Pianists, the only national duo piano competition in the United States at that time. As advocates for modern repertoire for piano duo, they have given numerous premieres across the Unites States and teach an award winning class of pianists at the University of South Carolina.
Marina Lomazov is an Associate Professor of Piano on the faculty of the University of South Carolina School of Music.
