PIANO
The piano area provides the highest artistry training for talented students to achieve their professional goals as a performer, teacher, or scholar. Students work closely with our devoted and supportive faculty for artistic growth. Our comprehensive program provides courses in piano literature, piano pedagogy, keyboard harmony, accompanying, chamber music coaching, and also many performance opportunities.
The Piano Area annually hosts the Knoxville International Piano Festival and Competition, a three-day long event in March that brings together young pianists and world-class concert and teaching artists from around the world.
Our students have won top prizes in international and national competitions, presented original research at prestigious conferences such as MTNA and the College Music Society, and are in demand as performers, teachers, and collaborative artists. Our graduates regularly pursue advanced degrees in music from other acclaimed institutions–including the University of Michigan, the Eastman School of Music, the University of Southern California, and the Cleveland Institute of Music among numerous others–and lead careers as teachers, performers, and scholars throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.
As an All-Steinway School, the Piano Department offers students access to world-class performance and practice facilities, including dedicated practice rooms furnished with grand pianos for piano majors, a choice of Hamburg or New York Steinway Concert Grands in performances, and a full-time piano technician who regularly tunes and maintains all pianos. Piano students additionally have the opportunity to enter the annual Concerto Competition, in which a piano winner is chosen to perform with the University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra.
Meet Our Faculty
Chih-Long Hu
Keyboard Area Coordinator & Sandra G. Powell Endowed Professor of Piano | hupiano@utk.edu
A native of Taiwan, pianist Chih-Long Hu‘s performance career was launched after receiving honors including the Taipei National Concert Hall Arising Star, the Chi-Mei Artist Award, and prizes from the Mauro Monopoli International Piano Competition in Italy, the Concurs International De Piano D’Escaldes-Engordany in Andorra, the Takamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan, and San Jose International Piano Competition in California.
An active performer, Hu performs extensively in Asia, Europe, and America appearing as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. His recent performance highlights include concerto performances of Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody, Mozart Concerto No.9, Schumann’s Concerto in A, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, solo and chamber recitals in China, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Ireland, Canada, and throughout the U.S. Hu’s performances have been broadcast in “Performance Today” through NPR stations across the U.S. as well as in Taiwan, China and Japan. His CD albums “Formosa Caprices”, “Complete Rachmaninov Etudes-Tableaux”, and “Goldberg Variations” have received critical acclaims.
Recipient of the UT Chancellor’s Excellence in Teaching Award and named “Teacher of the Year” by Tennessee Music Teachers Association, Knoxville Music Teachers Associations, and Appalachian Music Teachers Association, Hu is a committed and passionate teacher. He strives to cultivate and inspire curiosity in human expressions and to help his students discover their individuality through the music. His students have won numerous prizes from international and national competitions, and have been accepted to prestigious universities and conservatories after studying with him.
Hu involves with the community and has served in various professional organizations and committees. He is frequently invited to give lectures and masterclasses in various venues, as well as to judge international and national competitions. Hu has served as the Artistic Director of St. Andrews Piano Academy and Festival International in New Brunswick, Canada.
Hu holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in piano performance from the University of Michigan, a Master’s degree from Taipei National University of the Arts, and a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from National Taiwan University. His piano teachers include Arthur Greene, Hung-Kuan Chen, and Tai-Cheng Chen. Hu is currently the Sandra G. Powell Endowed Professor of Piano and the keyboard area coordinator at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
Katherine Benson
Lecturer of Piano | kbenso13@utk.edu
American pianist Katherine Benson is an important artistic voice of her generation through her “stunning” (ArtsKnoxville) performances and passion for innovation and arts leadership.
A native of Jonesborough, TN, Katherine is in demand as a soloist, chamber musician, adjudicator, and teacher, and has performed across the USA and abroad in Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. Highlights from the 2023-2024 concert seasons include Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra, Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos with the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Clara Schumann’s Concerto in A Minor with Spectrum Orchestra, as well as solo recitals in Michigan, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Washington, and North Dakota.
An avid chamber musician, Katherine is the Artistic Director and pianist for The Paramount Chamber Players (TPCP), one of the premier chamber music ensembles of the Appalachian Region and in its twentieth concert season. Since taking her role with TPCP in 2020, Katherine has organized and performed nearly three dozen concerts with the ensemble, including a professionally recorded and entirely virtual 2020–2021 concert season.
Katherine is deeply passionate about arts leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration, and her innovative projects have been sponsored by multiple grants from the University of Tennessee and Rackham College at the University of Michigan. With her colleagues at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Katherine co-founded the Knoxville International Piano Festival and Competition (KIPFC), hosted annually in the Spring semester at the UTK College of Music. KIPFC brings together nearly one hundred pianists each year for a weekend of concerts, masterclasses, lectures, and competitions. To learn more about KIPFC, visit https://music.utk.edu/events/piano-festival/
In another recent project, Painting Sound, Katherine explored the intersections of visual art, music, and film. She commissioned seven new works of art from graduate and undergraduate visual art students, each new artwork created directly in response to a solo piano piece and filmed in real-time. This ultimately culminated in a unique recital and gallery exhibition experience that showcases the real-time creative process of each artist in tandem with the piece of music that inspired the artwork. This project was featured in a lecture titled Painting Sound: A Case Study in Fostering Creativity and Collaboration Across the Arts presented at the 2023 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy.
In demand as a masterclass clinician and adjudicator, Katherine places great importance on encouraging and supporting the next generation of musicians. She recently presented masterclasses at the University of Mary, Whitworth University, the Blount County Keyboard Teachers Association, the Evelyn Miller Young Artist Series, and the Knoxville International Piano Festival, working with a diversity of age groups from elementary students to collegiate artists. Katherine has also served on the jury for multiple competitions, including the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition, the Tennessee Music Teachers Association Piano Competitions, and the Alabama and Florida Music Teachers Association Piano Competitions.
Katherine has additionally garnered numerous triumphs in over a dozen international and national piano competitions, having won top prizes and recognitions in the Heida Hermanns, Seattle, Kerikeri, Walled City Music, Teresa Carreño, and Thousand Islands International Piano Competitions.
Katherine holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Eastman School of Music, and Northwestern University. Her teachers have included Arthur Greene, Nelita True, James Giles, and Chih-Long Hu.
At the University of Tennessee Knoxville College of Music, Katherine maintains a vibrant studio of undergraduate and graduate piano performance majors, in addition to teaching classes in piano pedagogy, piano literature, chamber music, and keyboard harmony.
Visit www.katherinebensonpiano.com for concerts, project updates, recordings, and more.
Kevin Class
Professor of Collaborative Piano
Music Director of the Opera Theatre
Director of Collaborative Piano
Born in Belgium, pianist and conductor Kevin Class studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, as well as in the U.S and Canada. As a pianist, teachers have included Romeo Fracalanza, Ralph Votapek, Gyorgy Sebok and Daniel Blumenthal. In 1997, the Belgian government named Kevin a Fellow of the Flemish Community in recognition both of his performances of the complete Piano Sonatas of Mozart and Schubert, and for his contributions to the performance and promotion of contemporary music, with Jan-Marisse Huizing describing him as “an important ambassador for today’s composers”.
Kevin has made more than 15 commercial recordings, including piano concerti by Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart and Schumann as soloist with the Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra, several albums as a collaborative pianist with saxophonists Timothy McAllister and James Romain, cellist Wesley Baldwin, violinists Francisco Caban and Juhi Kee, soprano Soo Yeon Kim and others. He has also recorded several albums of solo piano works by Chopin, Schumann, Liszt’s complete Annees de Pelerinage, and an acclaimed recording of Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata.. Fanfare Magazine has described Kevin’s playing as “exceptionally refined” and American Record Guide described his work as “provocative and impressive, simply impeccable.”
Kevin was a top-prize winner in Young Keyboard Artists International Piano Competition, 1991 Mozart Piano Competition, Munich ARD and, most recently, the American Prize Competition. He was invited by Murray Perahia to perform an all-Chopin program at Reinbeck Castle for the Schleswig-Holstein Festival as part of the “Young Elites of Murray Perahia” classes with Perahia proclaiming that Kevin “is a poet who serves a deeply musical sensibility.”
Following Kevin’s performances at the Leeds International Piano Competition, Class received invitations to perform recitals in France, Switzerland, and Austria, including Vienna’s Musikverein. He has given solo recitals in numerous important venues worldwide, including Leeds’ Town Hall, Geneva’s Ansermet Hall, Munich’s Grosse Saal of the Hochschule fur Musik, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and six performances in New York’s Carnegie Hall. His sold-out solo recital performances in Chongqing and Chengdu, China were broadcast nationally by China’s national network CCTV.
In addition to work as a piano soloist, Kevin has been active for more than 30 years as an orchestra and opera conductor. Having begun studies of the violin at the age of three, Kevin’s study of conducting began while he was a violinist with several regional orchestras in Canada. At the age of 15, he began studying conducting with Zdzislaw Kopac in London, Ontario, finding himself on the podiums of several orchestras while still a teenager. Subsequent conducting mentors and instructors include Eduardo Diazmunos, Frank Shipway, Gustav Meier, Mario Bernardi and Carl St. Clair.
With a repertoire of more than 65 operas, Kevin has taken the podium of the National Opera La Monnaie in Brussels, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden and the National Opera Studio in London, Shanghai Opera and Opera Illinois (Peoria). He has served as Music Director/Conductor of the Illinois Opera Theatre in Champaign-Urbana, Opera Illinois (Peoria), Seoul Opera (South Korea), Arezzo Opera Festival (Italy), and since 2018 Berlin Opera and Saluzzo Opera academies.
With a large repertoire and passion for orchestral literature, Kevin has enjoyed conducting many orchestras in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Described by Arthur Fagan as “an excellent trainer of orchestras,” Kevin has been instrumental in refining work with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, Illinois New Music Ensemble, Ensemble Noir’ (Brussels) and orchestras in Taipei (Taiwan), Shanghai, Chongqing, and Kunming (China), Seoul (South Korea), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), and Manila (The Philippines). In 2009, Kevin conducted the inaugural orchestra concert of Chongqing’s iconic Grand Theatre in China.
He has also helped train numerous young conductors who have subsequently appeared with orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Miami Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Orchestra and opera houses including the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London, Paris Opera, Staatskapelle Weimar and Aachen, and Chicago Lyric Opera.
Kevin is particularly invested in the education of young musicians in Asia. For nearly two decades, he has been a frequent visitor to South Korea, China, Taiwan, The Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. He has been a recurring guest of Yonsei University in Seoul as well as the University of Philippines in Manila. He has taught masterclasses and workshops at Shanghai and Sichuan Conservatories, classes on the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven at Hebei Normal University in China, and several universities in South Korea and Taiwan. He regularly gives residencies teaching masterclasses for pianists, conductors, singers and working with orchestras and wind ensembles. He was a member of the jury for the grand finals of the 2018 Indonesia Steinway Piano Competition and as an artistic consultant for several of Asia’s leading orchestras and music festivals.
Kevin is currently Music Director & Conductor of Opera Theatre at the University of Tennessee- Knoxville, as well as Professor of Collaborative Piano. He has served on the piano faculty of SUNY-Potsdam and the opera conducting faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.
He has been profiled in the media by the BBC, NPR, PBS, Radio Noord Holland, KBS (Korea), CCTV (China), and locally by WUOT and East Tennessee PBS.
Eunsuk Jung
Senior Lecturer of Piano
Coordinator of Class Piano
Eun-Suk Jung, a native of South Korea, holds an undergraduate degree from Korea and the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in piano performance from West Virginia University, where she also studied organ and harpsichord. Her doctoral research project was studying university level of class piano curricula in the United State and Korea. The dissertation title was Promoting Comprehensive Musicianship in Keyboard Harmony Classes. The purpose of this study was to suggest a more standardized approach to class piano instruction and modifications to class piano curricula that widen the focus of the course content, without sacrificing the development of the specialized keyboard skill that forms the core of the class. She has been teaching college level of class piano for many years as well as music theory, ear training, and applied piano.
She has won numerous competitions in the United States and in Korea, such as the Music Teachers National Association Yamaha Competition, WVU Young Artists Competition, the Pittsburgh Concert Society Major Music Competition and Young Artist Competition. She has performed solo piano recitals in Frostburg University and Allegany College in Maryland, West Virginia University and was invited to 14th Season Music at Penn Alps for a Solo Piano Concert, Grantsville, Maryland. In addition to her solo work, Jung is a collaborative artist, works with professional musicians with various types of formation on recitals. She continues to perform in a variety of venues.
Jung is a Coordinator of Class Piano at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is Vice President of KMTA and organist/pianist at Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church in Knoxville.
Piano Lessons for Non-Majors
Non-major students may take piano lessons for credit as electives. Depending on the skill level and previous keyboard experience, students may be placed in MUSC 101 (Fundamental of Performance), MUPF 180 (Piano), or MUSC 540 (Secondary Applied Music).
Once registered, the student will be assigned a GTA instructor for weekly lessons. Students may register for one credit to receive 30-minute lesson each week, or two credits for 60-minute weekly lessons. For more information, please contact Chih-Long Hu (hupiano@utk.edu).
