Ernesto Barrios Lejano's musical career took him from his place of birth in the Philippines to Spain, the United States and finally to Canada. He obtained Bachelor of Music (Performance) degree from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. After graduation, he received obtained a Diploma de Virtuosismo (First Prize) at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, Spain. A Fulbright Grant allowed him to study at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York with the renowned Swiss piano pedagogue, Cecile Genhart obtaining a Master of Music Literature (Piano Performance Major) and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Performance and Pedagogy degrees. At Eastman, Ernesto Lejano wrote cadenzas to Mozart's piano concertos.
Dr. Lejano returned to the Philippines to teach. Later, he would move to the United States where he became a Visiting Lecturer and Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas before joining the Department of Music of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1967.
Dr. Ernesto Lejano achieved his greatest successes as a piano teacher. Menahem Pressler called Ernesto Lejano "one of the most important piano pedagogues in North America." He taught at the Banff Centre, the Young Keyboard Artists Institute of the University of Michigan and is one of the founders of the California State Summer School for the Arts. After his retirement as a full professor at the University of Alberta, Dr. Ernesto Lejano concentrated on teaching gifted young children.
Dr. Ernesto Lejano's performing career took him to Spain, Asia, the USA and Canada. He was a concerto soloist with the Manila Symphony, Cultural Center Philharmonic, Eastman-Rochester, Edmonton Symphony, and the University of Alberta Symphony Orchestras. His solo, chamber music and art song recitals/concerts took him to Spain, Asia and North America including the Stratford Festival (Ontario), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), the Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.), and Vogel Hall in Milwaukee. His many performances in the province of Alberta as a recitalist/lecturer were recorded and broadcast on radio and television by the CBC and CTV television networks.
Dr. Lejano's many achievements were recognized by the Alberta Government when they awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award (Excellence Category) in 1987. He was also a recipient of the "Outstanding Filipino Overseas" award from the Office of the President and the Department of Tourism and an "Outstanding Alumnus" Award from the University of Santo Tomas. A special resolution of the Congress of the Republic of the Philippines recognized Dr. Lejano's lifetime achievements.
Mr. Després has collaborated with internationally renowned pianists Radu Lupu and Nicolai Petrov, and has appeared as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Montreal, Quebec and others under the baton of conductors including Otto-Werner Muller, Franz-Paul Decker, Jens Nygaard and Simon Streatfield. Mr. Després's tours have included numerous recitals in Canada aired on CBC radio, and performances at summer festivals in North America.
His prestigious awards include: the Frank Kopp Memorial Prize at the University of Maryland International Piano competition; First Prize at the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Competition; the Musical Academy of Quebec "prix d' Europe" competition; and the doctoral concerto competition at SUNY, Stony Brook.
He studied under many of the great masters including Gyorgy Sebok, Gilbert Kalish, Adele Marcus, William Masselos and Christiane Senart.
Mr. Després has established a solid reputation as a leading lecture-performance artist on both period and modern instruments, including a series on the Chopin Ballades at New York's Julliard School, and the early sonatas of Beethoven at the yearly Friends of the Arts Beethoven Festival on Long Island.
He also was the musical director of Summer Serenades, a lecture-concert series at the University of Stony Brook's Staller Center. This imaginative series won an enormous following due in large part to his performances, his lucid and illustrative pre-concert lectures, and his creative programming. The series not only delivered compelling solo and chamber music performances from the standard repertoire, it also gave voice to such neglected composers as Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler-Werfel, and Federico Garcia Lorca to name but a few.
Jacques Després is the recipient of many grants from the Juilliard School, the Quebec ministries of Education and Cultural Affairs, and the Canada Council. He recently completed his doctorate at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and holds a Masters degree from the Juilliard School of Music. He received with High Distinction the Artist Diploma from Indiana University, and was awarded a unanimous first prize from the Conservatory of Quebec.
Jacques Després is presently Professor of Music at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
Born in Canada, pianist Marc Durand enjoys a versatile career as soloist accompanist, chamber musician and pedagogue. He is currently professor of piano at the Faculty of Music of the University of Montreal, and is a visiting artist on a regular basis for the Glenn Gould Professional School at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. The strongest influence on his artistic evolution has certainly been from Leon Fleisher, with whom he has closely collaborated since 1988 in a program conceived for the exceptionally gifted at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Marc has won numerous scholarships from the Government of Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as many important competitions and prizes, including the International Stepping Stone of the Canadian Music Competition in 1973 and the unanimous first prize winner at the Leschetizky Competition in New York in 1975. Following this, Mr. Durand made his Carnegie Recital Hall debut in January 1976. He has also appeared as soloist with a number of orchestras and has been heard regularly on Canadian radio and television. He has toured extensively in North America, Europe, North Africa, Asia, Indonesia and Australia.
Marc Durand and Paul Stewart are my teachers at the University of Montreal.
Paul Stewart is presently an Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Montreal. He made his orchestral debut in 1981 with the Toronto Symphony. Mr. Stewart has since performed repeatedly with the Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Vancouver symphonies, the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, I Musici de Montreal, and other symphonies and chamber orchestras in Canada and abroad. In 1996, he made a highly successful debut at the Moscow Conservatory which was broadcast by radio throughout Russia.
In recital, Mr. Stewart has been heard throughout Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. He has a special affection for India, having travelled extensively and played in the sub-continent since 1989. Combining scholarship and imagination, his recitals juxtapose familiar and unusual repertoire; a debut recital in London's Wigmore Hall in 1996 featured an eclectic program of Rachmaninoff and Medtner.
The recipient of numerous awards, in 1991 Mr. Stewart was a prize-winner at the Glory of Mozart International Piano Competition, and his career has been generously supported by the Canada Council. In 1993, he was Canada's representative in Bangkok during the International Festival that commemorated the sixtieth birthday of Queen Sirikit of Thailand, and a major tour of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea followed. Well-known in Canada for his radio and television appearances, and internationally through the BBC, he has also been heard in partnership with such distinguished artists as Maureen Forrester, Jessye Norman and Ben Heppner, and recent engagements included appearances with world-renowned conductor, Pinchas Zukermann. Chamber music, lecturing and teaching are important parts of his active career.
His recordings include Benjamin Britten's "Young Apollo", Schubert lieder and transcriptions, a CD containing Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto and Medtner's "Night Wind" Sonata, and the complete "Goyescas" of Granados (soon to be released).
World-renowed piano pedagogue, performer and adjudicator in international competitions, John Perry is professor of keyboard studies at the University of Southern California. He studied with the legendary Cecile Genhart at the Eastman School of Music. He also studied with Frank Mannheimer.
His distinguished career as a performer began by taking the highest prizes in both the Busoni and Viotti international piano competitions in Italy, and special honours at the Marguerite Long international competition in Paris. Perry has performed extensively throughout Europe and North America to great critical acclaim.
Perry is most famous as an outstanding piano teacher. His students have won major competitions, including the Rubinstein, the Naumburg, the National Chopin Competition and the Beethoven Foundation Competition. He is a frequent guest faculty member at the Banff Centre in Canada and summer festivals including Sarasota Music Festival, and at the Toronto Conservatory. His recordings are available on Musical Heritage Society, CBC, ACA, and Fox labels. Here is his USC bio.