18th Annual

Cornell Concerto Competition

Phiroze Mehta is Professor Emeritus in the School of Music at Ithaca College, where he taught piano from 1976 until 2015. He has performed widely as recitalist, collaborative pianist, and with chamber music groups. He has presented master classes in the U.S., China, Taiwan, and India, and has also frequently served as adjudicator for regional and national piano competitions. He was named a Dana Teaching Fellow at Ithaca College in recognition of his excellence in teaching and service to the college. His educational background includes degrees in Piano Performance, Electrical Engineering and in Industrial and Systems Engineering. Prior to joining the music faculty at Ithaca College he taught piano at Western Michigan University and at Western Illinois University.

Hailed as a “...force of nature” by The Double Reed, bassoonist Christin Schillinger specializes in the accessibility of the avant-garde, aiming to broaden the audience for both new music and bassoon. Schillinger works closely with living composers who remark on her “natural interpretation” and “perfect musical choices.” Her solo albums, Bassoon Unbounded (2018), Bassoon Transcended (2013) and Bassoon Surrounded (2009), produced for MSR Classics by Swineshead Productions, include world-premiere recordings of new repertoire for bassoon. To facilitate the demands of 21st-century compositions, Schillinger researches reed-making consistency. Her 2016 book, Bassoon Reed Making (Indiana University Press) details current and historic trends in this field. Schillinger’s groundbreaking research extends to guest lectures and residencies throughout the United States and Europe. Schillinger is an advocate for diversity in performance and programming. She is a founding member of Limitless Collective, an all-female ensemble featuring works by women, PoC, and the LGBTQ community. She is also the creator and organizer of the fEmpower social media network for bassoonists identifying as female. Schillinger publishes numerous articles and appears regularly as a performer and lecturer. In addition, Schillinger co-hosted the 2012 International Double Reed Society Annual Conference and inaugural IDRS Teen Camp. Schillinger is on faculty at Ithaca College in New York where she performs frequently with New Music and traditional orchestral ensembles. Previously, she has held positions with Miami University, the University of Nevada, and various orchestras throughout the west. Christin Schillinger holds degrees from Northwestern University (BMus), Michigan State University (MMus), and Arizona State University (DMA).

Alexander Shuhan, Professor of Horn, is also a founding member (1993) of Rhythm & Brass, an international touring, performing and recording ensemble. He is principal horn with the Binghamton Philharmonic and the Fort Smith (AR) Symphony and performs frequently with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Skaneateles Chamber Music Festival. He also previously served as principal horn of the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra. Recently, Shuhan has begun specialized teacher training that will certify him to be the first Suzuki Horn teacher in the world. He has studied at Southern Methodist University with Greg Hustis, the Eastman School of Music with Verne Reynolds, and the Pre-College Division of the Juilliard School with Harry Berv. Other teachers include Marvin Howe, Nancy Cochran, John Jacobsen and Henry Babcock. Shuhan is also an accomplished composer and arranger, having written a number of works for Rhythm & Brass. His composition "Awakenings" is featured on the most recent Rhythm & Brass recording entitled "Inside The Blue Suitcase."

A pianist always striving for adventurous, thoughtful, and challenging programming, Andrew Zhou has concertized in major venues in Los Angeles, Boston, and Paris. He has collaborated with the Callithumpian Consort, Discovery Ensemble, and the Quatuor Diotima, and has worked with composers Unsuk Chin, Tristan Murail, Roberto Sierra, Christopher Stark, and Christian Wolff. Highlights include working closely with Chin as a soloist in the Austrian premiere of her “Double Concerto” for prepared piano and percussion as part of the Klangspuren Schwaz festival, and performing Messiaen’s “Turangalîla-Symphonie” as part of the Lucerne Festival Academy. Finalist and winner of four special prizes at the 2012 Concours International de Piano d’Orléans in France, Andrew studied with Bruce Brubaker at New England Conservatory, where he received the Beneficent Society Scholarship, and Thomas Schultz at Stanford University, where he studied, in addition to music, international relations (with a focus on African studies) and modern languages. He has also participated in coachings and lessons with, among others, Emanuel Ax, Stephen Drury, Ursula Oppens, Jacques Rouvier, Peter Serkin, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and members of the St. Lawrence and Borromeo String Quartets, as well as members of Ensemble Modern and Ensemble InterContemporain. He is currently in the Doctor of Musical Arts program in Critical Keyboard Studies at Cornell, studying with Xak Bjerken. He has worked closely at Cornell with the graduate composers and co-curated of a symposium at Cornell in April 2013 with Walter Zimmermann as composer-in-residence. He was the recipient of the Manon Michels Einaudi Grant as well as a Don Randel Fellowship, which allowed him to create and execute an undergraduate seminar on the subject of music and diplomacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His current dissertation unites and counterpoints sound studies, disability studies, recording technologies and histories, performance practice, and changing conceptions of the “undomesticated ‘piano sound'” as they relate to the social and artistic standings of the instrument in the past hundred years. He has recently released a CD entited “Vienne et après” (Tessitures label) with works by Schoenberg, Lachenmann, Stockhausen, Zimmermann, Matthias Pintscher, and Olga Neuwirth, with works by the last two receiving their first studio recordings.