Canadian Kevin Wang among 13 young pianists invited to 6th Claudette Sorel Piano Competition

American pianist (and organist) Father Seán Brett Duggan is a Benedictine monk of Saint Joseph Abbey in Saint Benedict, Covington, Louisiana. From 1988 to 2001 he taught music, Latin and religion at St. Joseph Seminary College in Louisiana and was director of music and organist at St. Joseph Abbey. From 2001 to 2004 he was a visiting professor of piano at the University of Michigan.

Since then he has been associate professor of piano at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Fredonia. During the fall semester of 2008 he was also a guest professor of piano at Eastman School of Music. He has been a guest artist and adjudicator at the Chautauqua Institution for several summers, and is also a faculty member of the Golandsky Institute at Princeton, New Jersey. He continues to study the Taubman approach with Edna Golandsky in New York City.

A native of New Jersey, Father Duggan has performed with many orchestras, including the Louisiana Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic, Leipzig’s Gewandhausorchester, Leipzig Baroque Soloists,Prague Chamber Orchestra, American Chamber Orchestra and Pennsylvania Sinfonia. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance at Loyola University in New Orleans and his Master of Fine Arts degree at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1979. For three years he was the Pittsburgh Opera Company’s pianist and assistant chorus master. He also taught piano at Carnegie Mellon and was a member of the Carnegie Mellon Piano Trio. Duggan left Pittsburgh to enter the Benedictine order at St. Joseph Abbey near Covington, Louisiana, in 1982, graduated summa cum laude with a Master of Arts degree in Theology from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1988.

In September 1983, after entering the monastery, Séan Duggan won first prize in the Johann Sebastian Bach International Competition for pianists in Washington D.C., which entitled him, among other honors, to various concerts around the country and a two-month tour of Germany. In the “Bach Year”, 1985, he gave complete performances of J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier in New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Birmingham to critical acclaim. In 1991 he participated again in the Bach Competition in Washington D.C.; this time he was one of three first-place winners, and this entitled him to another round of concert engagements and a second tour of Germany.

During the 250^th anniversary of Bach’s death, Sean Duggan performed the complete cycle of J.S. Bach’s keyboard works eight times in a series of fifteen recitals entitled Bach On the Threshold of Hope in various American and European cities. For seven years he hosted a weekly program on the New Orleans NPR station entitled “Bach on Sunday.”

An acclaimed pianist whose skill has been praised in such publications at The New York Times, Tribune de Geneve (Switzerland) and Berlin Tagespiegel (Germany) Brian Preston debuted with the Baltimore Symphony at age 17 and has since performed concerts throughout the U.S., Canada, he Virgin Islands, and in many of Europe’s leading music centers. A double prizewinner in the Washington International Competition, National Prizewinner in the 1985 Young Artist Comp. of the Nat’l Federation of Music Clubs and two time prizewinner in the Boyd Piano Comp. of Augusta, Georgia, Preston was also the only U.S. finalist in the ’78 Geneva International Competition. He has served as the Artistic Director of the Thousand Islands International Piano Competition since 2010.

Mr. Preston studied with the Peabody Conservatory’s famed director and music author Otto, and his daughter Dorothea. At the Eastman School of Music he studyied with legendary pedagogue Cécile Genhart. Mr. Preston also worked with Peabody artist faculty Konrad Wolff and Walter Hautzig prior to attending Eastman.

As a teacher dedicated to passing on the musical traditions handed down to him, Preston’s pre-college private students have won first prizes in international through regional levels since 1980. A leader in the Rochester, New York, music community, Mr. Preston balances his private teaching with collegiate piano instruction through Nazareth College where he has been on faculty since 1991. He also has served on faculty of the Chautauqua Summer Piano Institute. There he has given masterclasses at such institutions as Ithaca College, SUNY Potsdam, SUNY Binghamton, the University of Connecticut at Storres, the Interlochen Academy, Allegheny College and the Shean Competion of Edmonton, Alberta. He is dedicated to serving his local music community through the Greater Rochester MTNA and the Rochester Piano Teachers Guild.

Professor Emerita of Music at Nazareth College where she served as Coordinator of Keyboard Studies and taught piano, piano pedagogy and literature, and current NYSMTA Immediate Past-President, Dr. Beverly Smoker retired in May, 2017 as Chair of the Music Department and director of the Master of Music in Performance and Pedagogy. She previously taught at Cornell, Grinnell, and Coe Colleges, and at the University of Iowa. For several years she also maintained a private piano studio in her home. Her students have earned undergraduate and graduate music degrees at universities throughout the country and maintain careers as pedagogues and performing artists.

A long-term MTNA member, she has presented many lectures, workshops and performances for national and state and conferences as well as for local community organizations. Her numerous appearances as pianist include performances on the Knitting Factory Composer Series, NYC, and recordings for Centaur Records and ABC Radio in Brisbane, Australia. She presents a wide range of repertoire including recitals and workshops devoted to twentieth-century music, and she has premiered several works written for her. Dr. Smoker was a recipient of a Gramma Fisher Fellowship at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, and for ten years, a recipient of solo touring grants from the Iowa Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts. In 2017 she was honored with the Rochester Philharmonic’s Outstanding Music Educators Special Award.

Acclaimed by such papers as The New York Times and Ma’ariv (Israel), Eliran Avni is an emerging force in the classical music scene. A piano faculty member at SUNY Fredonia, and a member of the Ekstasis Duo with cellist Natasha Farny, Mr. Avni made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age 17. Since then, he has appeared as a soloist and chamber music collaborator throughout Europe, North and South America, as well as in his native Israel. As a soloist, Eliran is known as a preeminent interpreter of the music of composer Avner Dorman. Solo performance highlights include Dorman’s Azerbaijani Dance with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta at Carnegie Hall, Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto with the Alabama Symphony, and the Grieg Concerto with the Oakland East Bay Symphony (California). Since their 2018 debut, the Ekstasis Duo has appeared on series including New York City’s Merkin Hall, Saugerties ProMusica, and Rochester’s Live from Hochstein.

Having developed a strong affinity for chamber music after studying with world-renowned musicians Yo-Yo Ma and Isaac Stern, Mr. Avni has collaborated with numerous artists, as well as actors Sigourney Weaver and Richard Chamberlain. In 2010, Eliran founded SHUFFLE Concert, a mixed chamber ensemble of six virtuoso musicians based on his original performance concept which has the audience select music to be performed during the concert from a varied list of composers and genres. He served as Artistic Director of the ensemble from 2010-2018, performing throughout the US, Canada and Israel.

A charismatic lecturer and teacher, Eliran has presented master classes and lectures on the connection between music and emotion in both the United States and Israel, and has taught at prestigious institutions such as The Juilliard School and the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival.

Having begun his childhood musical training at the Tel Aviv Academy with Marina Bondarenko, Eliran won first prize in both the Clairmont and Rachmaninoff Competitions at the age of 16. From 1989-2000, he was an annual scholarship recipient of the Israel-America Cultural Foundation. Dr. Avni received both his BM and MM degrees while studying with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky at The Juilliard School and completed his DMA degree as a student of both Dr. Kaplinsky and Jerome Lowenthal. His dissertation: “The Musician’s Challenge: Merging Emotion and Structure in Performance”, written under the advisement of Carl Schachter, presents an original methodology designed to assist musicians in discovering and understanding the emotional content of musical works.

Born in Paris of French-Hungarian parentage, Claudette Sorel was trained in the United States under famous teachers as Olga Samaroff Stokowski, Rudolf Serkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. A child piano prodigy, she is the youngest graduate of The Juilliard School completing her degree at age nine. At the age of 10, she made her New York Town Hall debut and the following year performed with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.