Concerts Around Town

Spencer Myer is one of the most respected and sought-after artists on today’s concert stage. He has been lauded for “superb playing” and “poised, alert musicianship” by the Boston Globe, and labeled “definitely a man to watch” by London’s The Independent after his 2012 Wigmore Hall recital debut.

He has been soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Cape Town and Johannesburg Philharmonics, the Indianapolis, New Haven and Phoenix Symphony Orchestras and Beijing’s China Na-tional Symphony, collaborating with conductors Yannick Nézét-Séguin, Michael Christie, Robert Franz, Bernhard Gueller, Jahja Ling, Kevin Rhodes, Thomas Wilkins and Victor Yampolsky. His 2005 tour of South Africa included a performance of Beethoven’s five piano concerti with the Chamber Orchestra of South Africa, followed by six subsequent return tours. An in-demand chamber musician, he has appeared with cellists Lynn Harrell, Ralph Kirshbaum and Amit Peled, and enjoys a recurring partnership with the Miami String Quartet at the Kent/Blossom Music Fes-tival. Other artistic partners include clarinetist David Shifrin, soprano Nicole Cabell, and the Jupiter and Pacifica String Quartets.

A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, The Juilliard School and Stony Brook University, he was previously a member of the piano faculty of Boston’s Longy School of Music, and is currently Associate Professor of Piano at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has re-leased five CDs on the Steinway & Sons label — Piano Rags of William Bolcom, three discs with cellist Brian Thornton, and most recently the Four Chopin Impromptus. He is a Steinway & Sons artist.

Born in Kazan, Russia, into a family of musicians, Daria Rabotkina gave her first solo recital at the age of ten. Her education started at the Specialized Music School under the guidance of her parents, and Nora Kazatchkova. Later, it continued in Kazan State Conservatory and Mannes College of Music in New York City under the tutelage of Vladimir Feltsman. In addition, she holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with Natalya Antonova.

Rabotkina joined the piano faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2024, where she also serves as the Director of Academy Piano Studies. As guest faculty, she has presented masterclasses, private lessons and lectures at the Kazan State Conservatory. Passionate about early piano education, Rabotkina founded the FunKey Piano Project at Texas State in 2018, where she was an Associate Professor of Piano (2016-2024).

Concerto highlights include San Francisco and New World symphonies, Kirov (Mariinsky) Orchestra, Moscow State Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, Hudson Philharmonic, Charleston Symphony, Harrisburg Symphony, Orquesta Sinfonica de Concepción and Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. Rabotkina has collaborated with Michael Tilson Thomas, Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Feltsman, Julian Kuerti, JoAnn Falletta, Benjamin Shwartz, and Giancarlo Guerrero. As a soloist, she has given recitals at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Kennedy Center, Weill Recital Hall and Merkin Concert Hall in New York City, Ravinia’s Rising Stars, and Dame Myra Hess in Chicago. Her appearances abroad include China, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, France, Mexico and Japan.

Pianist Dongni Xie is a distinguished pianist and prize-winner of numerous international piano competitions, including seven first prizes. Critics have praised her “bold and riveting” (Peninsula) and “bravura performance…mature and relaxed, perfectly in line with its composer’s presumed intention.” (Herald Tribune). She’s held performances at Carnegie Hall, Château de Fontainebleau (France), Dream Forest Arts Center (South Korea), Gijon City Hall (Spain), and the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, as well as a plethora of other venues throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States— being the featured soloist with orchestras such as the Boulder Symphony Orchestra, the Debut Symphony, and the Meadows Symphony Orchestra. Her recently performance with Mansfield Philharmonic was covered by NBC 5.

Xie has appeared as a featured artist at numerous international music festivals, including the Imago Sloveniae (Slovenia), Festival ARTIS (Slovakia), Shanghai Conservatory Music Season (China), the Summer Music Festival (UK) and the Sarasota Music Festival. An avid chamber musician, Xie collaborates frequently with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and The Dallas Opera at their chamber concerts. Xie is an advocate for new music and has premiered many solo and chamber works in the genre. She is the Artistic Director of the “In Bloom” musiCON Concert Series in New York City and co-founder of Live! Again, a series that blends music with visual arts. She also founded In6ix, a jazz-classical fusion sextet that includes Grammy winning musicians. Xie actively supports music education and charitable causes, performing benefit concerts for orphans, refugees, and local charities, and volunteering with programs like OrchKids and Cliburn in the Classroom.

Born in Changsha, China, Dr. Xie has studied with Chen Jiang, Yong Hi Moon, Norman Krieger, Pamela Mia Paul, and Joaquín Achúcarro. She is frequently invited to give lectures and to serve on competition juries worldwide. In August 2025, she joined the faculty of the SMU Meadows School of the Arts.

Recipient of the 2011 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Chinese-American pianist Chu-Fang Huang has won enthusiastic responses from audience and critics alike in extensive orchestral and recital appearances throughout the U.S. and abroad.Right after being named a finalist in the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2005, Ms. Huang won First Prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition. Besides being its first Chinese winner, Ms. Huang also swept every special prize the competition offered: “Best Performance of Beethoven’s Work”, “Best Performance of Chopin’s work”, and “Audience’s Favorite Award.” In the same year, Ms. Huang won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and was awarded the Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize, the Embassy Series Prize, the Lied Center of Kansas Prize, the Mortimer Levitt Piano Chair of YCA, and the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women Artists.

Since her Lincoln Center debut at Alice Tully Hall in 2005. Ms. Huang has given recitals at Carnegie Hall in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Kravis Center in Palm Beach, and major cities throughout the US including Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Miami, San Francisco, and Cambridge. In Europe, she has been re-engaged three times at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, as well as the Klavier Festival in Germany and the Chopin Festival in Krakow. She has also performed at the Sydney Opera House in Australia, Suntory Hall in Japan, and the Beijing Zhong-Shan Music Hall, Fujian National Auditorium, and Liao-ning Grand Opera House in China.

Ran Dank has a storied career with roots in his Fourth Prize win at the 2007 Cleveland International Piano Competition. Two years later, Dank won a coveted place on the Young Concert Artists roster and made his New York recital debut. Mr. Dank is an ardent advocate for contemporary music including performances of William Bolcom’s Pulitzer winning set of “Twelve New Etudes,” and has given, alongside pianist and wife, Soyeon Kate Lee, the world premieres of Frederic Rzewski’s “Four Hands,” and Alexander Goehr’s “Seven Impromptus.” Mr. Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee have also featured the world premiere of multiple grammy-nominated pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin’s “Tango” for piano four-hands. Now an Associate Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, Dank still performs widely, and has returned to Cleveland as a juror for the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists.

Soyeon Kate Lee has been lauded by The New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style,” and by the Washington Post for her “stunning command of the keyboard.” As a Second Prize winner of the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition and winner of Naumburg International Piano Competition, Lee went on to graduate from The Juilliard School, where she was awarded the William Petschek Piano Debut Award at Lincoln Center and the Arthur Rubinstein Award. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. In 2022, Soyeon Kate Lee returned to The Juilliard School as piano faculty. The following summer she came back to Cleveland to serve as faculty for the 2023 Cleveland International Piano Institute for Young Artists.

Praised as a passionate pianist who “does not play a single note without thought or feeling” (New York Concert Review), Chaeyoung Park has emerged as one of today’s most compelling young artists. She has medaled in numerous competitions including the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists. In 2019, she became the first female Korean pianist to win the Hilton Head International Piano Competition, which led to her Carnegie Hall solo debut. This past season she appeared as a concerto soloist with the Maryland Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Mobile Symphony, and Redlands Symphony. Upcoming engagements include the Steinway Societies of the Bay Area and Western Pennsylvania as well as her much-anticipated return to Bravo! Vail. Park earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at The Juilliard School, where she was a Gina Bachauer Scholar and a Kovner Fellow and received the Arthur Rubinstein Prize upon graduation.  

Jonathan Mamora has performed with orchestras all over the world and won numerous international competitions including Concurs Internacional de Música Maria Canals Barcelona, AntwerPiano International, Palm Springs, and many others. Now with a burgeoning performing career, Mamora plays in venues ranging from his church to community spaces to world-famous concert halls. His May 2023 debut recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall drew great praise from the New York Concert Review. Last year he returned to Carnegie as the winner of Hilton Head International Piano Competition. As a Semi-Finalist of the 2024 Cleveland International Piano Competition, Mamora was awarded the University of Akron Artist Residency, which brought him back to northeast Ohio for two weeks. In addition to piano and organ, Mamora also performs as a percussionist, vocalist, and conductor. He currently serves as Director of Keyboard Studies at La Sierra University in Riverside, California. 

Currently Associate Professor of Music and the Associate Chair for Performance Activities at Smith College, pianist Jiayan Sun’s story includes more than piano. Sun’s deep interest in early keyboard instruments resulted in a dynamic career where in captured major piano prizes in Cleveland, Dublin, Leeds and Toronto International Piano Competitions, as well as critically acclaimed performances as a fortepianist and harpsichordist with the American Classical Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall. His solo album Busoni and His Muses garnered further critical acclaim by Gramophone and International Piano. He is a Steinway & Sons artist.  

Ran Dank has a storied career with roots in his Fourth Prize win at the 2007 Cleveland International Piano Competition. Two years later, Dank won a coveted place on the Young Concert Artists roster and made his New York recital debut. Mr. Dank is an ardent advocate for contemporary music including performances of William Bolcom’s Pulitzer winning set of “Twelve New Etudes,” and has given, alongside pianist and wife, Soyeon Kate Lee, the world premieres of Frederic Rzewski’s “Four Hands,” and Alexander Goehr’s “Seven Impromptus.” Mr. Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee have also featured the world premiere of multiple grammy-nominated pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin’s “Tango” for piano four-hands. Now an Associate Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, Dank still performs widely, and has returned to Cleveland as a juror for the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists.

Soyeon Kate Lee has been lauded by The New York Times as a pianist with “a huge, richly varied sound, a lively imagination and a firm sense of style,” and by the Washington Post for her “stunning command of the keyboard.” As a Second Prize winner of the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition and winner of Naumburg International Piano Competition, Lee went on to graduate from The Juilliard School, where she was awarded the William Petschek Piano Debut Award at Lincoln Center and the Arthur Rubinstein Award. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. In 2022, Soyeon Kate Lee returned to The Juilliard School as piano faculty. The following summer she came back to Cleveland to serve as faculty for the 2023 Cleveland International Piano Institute for Young Artists.

Praised as a passionate pianist who “does not play a single note without thought or feeling” (New York Concert Review), Chaeyoung Park has emerged as one of today’s most compelling young artists. She has medaled in numerous competitions including the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists. In 2019, she became the first female Korean pianist to win the Hilton Head International Piano Competition, which led to her Carnegie Hall solo debut. This past season she appeared as a concerto soloist with the Maryland Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Mobile Symphony, and Redlands Symphony. Upcoming engagements include the Steinway Societies of the Bay Area and Western Pennsylvania as well as her much-anticipated return to Bravo! Vail. Park earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at The Juilliard School, where she was a Gina Bachauer Scholar and a Kovner Fellow and received the Arthur Rubinstein Prize upon graduation.