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 the Master Course in Interpretation, an intensive, innovative exploration of the performance of  classical piano literature. The course is unique among classical piano courses, featuring a teaching program developed by Pawel 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 to work 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.