Natalie L. Haslam College of Music

Eunsuk Jung

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ADDRESS
The University of Tennessee
336 Natalie L Haslam Music Center
1741 Volunteer Boulevard
Knoxville, TN 37996-2600

Eunsuk Jung

Senior Lecturer of Piano, Coordinator of Class Piano

Dr. Eunsuk Jung is a pianist, collaborative artist, and pedagogue. She made her orchestral debut in 1992 with the Seoul Symphony Orchestra in Korea. Since then, she has been performed solo recitals, concerti and chamber concerts throughout Asia and the United States. Her most recent solo performance was at Carnegie Hall in NYC. She has also been an active collaborative artist and has continuously worked with professional instrumentalists throughout the East Coast. Her recitals include working with well-known clarinet players at the ICA (International Clarinet Association Conference), world-renowned tuba and euphonium players at the ITEC (International Tuba Euphonium Conference), University of Tennessee woodwind faculty members, and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra String Quartet.

In addition to her performances, Dr. Jung has been invited to give master classes in the United States and Korea and serve as a judge at various music competitions, including the Music Teachers National Association Regional Division in Tennessee and Kentucky, YMIC (Young Musicians Inspiring Change) International Competition, the Association of Christian Schools Fine Arts Competition, Youth Aliyah Concert Competition, and the University of Tennessee’s Celebration of Excellence.

As a pedagogue, Dr. Jung is currently on the music faculty of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Coordinator of Class Piano studies. She previously worked at Hiwassee College in TN where she served as the Piano Area Chair for all keyboard studies. She recently served as the President of the Knoxville Music Teachers Association and advisor of MTNA Collegiate Chapter at the University of Tennessee. She holds both a Master of Music and Doctorate of Musical Arts degrees in Piano Performance from West Virginia University and a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Mokwon University in South Korea. Dr. Jung studied organ and harpsichord and held organ recitals while she was at West Virginia University. She is currently serving as the organist at Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Education

DMA, Piano Performance – West Virginia University (2004)
MM, Piano Performance – West Virginia University
BM, Piano Performance – Mokwon University

Edie Johnson

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
207A AMB
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Phone
865-974-7539

Edie Johnson

Lecturer of Organ

Edie Johnson, Organist and Music Associate at Church Street United Methodist Church, teaches organ, harpsichord, and sacred music courses. Previously, she served as Assistant Organist/Choir Director at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and Seminary Organist and Affiliate Professor of Church Music at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, IN.  She has also taught at Taylor University and Indiana University.

Johnson has won prizes in many organ performance competitions including first place in the John Rodland organ and church music scholarship competition. She has performed for national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists (AGO), the Association of Anglican Musicians, the Organ Historical Society and the National General Assembly of the Disciples of Christ Church. Several of her performances have been broadcast on American Public Media’s Pipedreams. In 2011, Johnson premiered El Tigre, Pamela Decker’s first work for organ and orchestra at the 2011 Southeast AGO Regional Convention.  In addition to solo organ performances, she also is active as a chamber musician on both piano and organ.

Edie Johnson is active in the work of the Royal School of Church Music in America.  She has served on its Board of Directors and has been a Housemaster and Course Organist for many of the Carolina and Charlotte Summer Courses.

A particular interest is the use of mental imagery and rehearsal in music learning, teaching and performing. Johnson has given many presentations to universities, chapters of the American Guild of Organists and to the Association of Anglican Musicians based on research regarding techniques to optimize practice sessions and relieve performance anxiety.

Education

DM, Organ Performance and Literature – Indiana University 2003
MM, Organ Performance – Indiana University, 1998
Furman University, Magna cum laude, Organ Performance, 1996

Chih-Long Hu

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
330 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-2600
Phone
865-974-0624

Chih-Long Hu

Keyboard Area Coordinator & Sandra G. Powell Endowed Professor of Piano

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.

Education

DMA, Piano Performance – The University of Michigan
MFA, Piano Performance – Taipei National University of the Arts
BE, Civil Engineering – National Taiwan University

Music Samples

Kevin Class

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
335 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Website
https://www.kevinclass.com/
Phone
865-974-2110

Kevin Class

Director of Collaborative Piano, Music Director of Opera Theatre

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.

Education

DMA – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2007)
MM – Michigan State University

Music Samples

Katherine Benson

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ADDRESS

University of Tennessee
College of Music
333 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040

Phone
865-974-7530

Katherine Benson

Lecturer of Piano

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.

Education

DMA, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Artist Certificate, University of Tennessee Knoxville,
MM, Piano Performance, Northwestern University
BM, Piano Performance and Literature, Eastman School of Music,