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The Gold Country Piano Institute, based in beautiful Nevada County
in Northern California, is a non-profit organization dedicated to
instruction in classical piano for students of all levels and
professional performers. Every June, young pianists arrive from all
over the world to receive daily individual instruction with Master Teachers. Next year's piano workshop program schedule will run June 10-23, 2006.
The Institute faculty members
are all concert pianists who teach master classes around the world,
judge major piano competitions, and are masters of the technique and
interpretation of the classical piano repertoire.
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The Institute faculty includes:
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Both students and faculty reside in private homes in the Nevada
City/Grass Valley area. They form friendships with their host families
and with each other in the exciting cultural community of Nevada County.
The Institute presents an intensive and innovative 2-week master
course in the interpretation and performance of the classical piano
repertoire. The course is unique among classical piano courses,
featuring a teaching program developed by Dr. Skrzypek, its artistic
director, for the well-known Warsaw Piano Workshop, which is held at the Frederic Chopin State School of Music in Warsaw, Poland.
In most master courses, students are assigned to an instructor and
work with him or her on new pieces. Students at GCPI bring prepared
repertoires of three or more pieces to the master course. They receive
lessons from all three of our instructors, and study different pieces
with each instructor.
In this way, studying each of their pieces with a different teacher
who has performed the work in concert, students take their performances
to higher levels, spending their lesson time with master instructors
refining technique and interpretation instead of learning the notes of
new pieces. Studying with three instructors who are associated with
different schools and traditions of piano performance introduces
students to the techniques and interpretation appropriate to the
individual pieces in their repertoires, as well as to preparation and
performance skills generally.
Participants also have the opportunity to continue their studies
through the unique Scholarship Exchange Program offered by the
Institute and the Warsaw Piano Workshop, which takes place annually in
the latter half of August. Two scholarships
are offered to the best and/or the most promising young pianists as
follows: one to a pianist from the United States who participates in
the Gold Country Piano Institute; one to a pianist from Poland who
participates in the Warsaw Piano Workshop. Each scholarship covers full tuition and board in the partner-course; airfare is not included.
The Gold Country Piano Institute sponsors an exciting series of classical piano concerts each year, featuring top guest performers and participants in the Master Course. Guest performers at these concerts have included Aileen James, piano four-hand teams of Paul Perry and Ken Hardin ("Two by Four"), and Mark Anderson & Tamriko Siprashvili, Rachael Naomi Kudo, Hubert Salwarowski, Jacek Mysinski, Chetan Tierra, Agnieszka Przemyk, Tomasz Zgorzelski, and Andrew Wilde.
The Opening Concert of the performance series features a professional concert pianist as Guest Artist. Our guest pianist in 2004 was Andrew Wilde of Manchester, England who played for our largest & most enthusiastic audience to that date. Two other concerts are presented midway through the course: the Gala Concert,
"The Artistic Director Presents….," performed by an international slate
of exceptionally talented young pianists. The Institute concludes with
the Participants' Concert, featuring the pianists of the Institute performing works they have developed with the Institute faculty.
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