Judges
COMING SOON
American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has a distinctive musical voice. She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. The New York Times described her as “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.” The Washington Post has called her “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.”
Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. Highlights of the 2026/7 season include the premiere of Brad Mehldau’s Suite for Piano at Boston’s Symphony Hall, which was commissioned for Simone by the Terezin Foundation, a tour with the Juilliard String Quartet and recitals at the Oregon Bach Festival and Toronto’s Koerner Hall. She will collaborate with the string orchestra A Far Cry, to perform and record the arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations that they have made together. In October she will receive the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Memorial Award from Washington Performing Arts.
Elisabeth Pridonoff was for thirty-five years Professor of Piano and Duo-in-Residence with Eugene Pridonoff at the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music. Now Emerita Professor of Piano at UC-CCM, she is on the faculty of the Arizona Piano Institute and Artist-in-Residence at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. Former students were first place winners in the Second International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz in Kiev, Ukraine, Missouri Southern International, Ninth Biennial American Pianists Association National Piano Fellowship Auditions, Shreveport Wideman, and Midland-Odessa competitions and according to the September 2022 MTNA e-JOURNAL are among the most tenured and tenure-track piano performance faculty in the United States from leading teachers and institutions.
An internationally acclaimed pianist and pedagogue, Jan Loeffler has forged a distinguished career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator, performing and teaching across the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and North America, with notable appearances at the National Concert Hall Dublin, the Sheldonian Theatre Oxford, and the iconic Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal.
He pursued his studies with Prof. Silke-Thora Matthies at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg and with Prof. Ian Fountain at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Since 2013, he has held a position on the piano faculty of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, where he instructs principal-study pianists and serves as Keyboard Department Coordinator of the Pre-College division. He has been invited to present masterclasses and lectures at distinguished institutions including the Colburn School, the Mannes School of Music, Vanderbilt University here in Nashville, and the Hochschule für Musik Dresden.
His students have been recognized with top honors at major international competitions and have gone on to pursue further studies at leading conservatories, including the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, the Franz Liszt Academy Budapest, and the University of Michigan.
A highly experienced adjudicator, Jan is regularly invited to serve on juries of piano competitions worldwide.