Cornell University: Center for Historical Keyboards hosts young piano stars

For seven days this summer, 12 young artists from around the world will be immersed in one of the world’s most significant collections of performance-ready historical pianos, as part of the Forte/Piano Summer Academy at Cornell University’s Center for Historical Keyboards, in partnership with the Westfield Center.

“The new educational initiative will give these students the opportunity of a lifetime, to be stimulated by instruments of the collection that are associated with music by all major composers, and to rethink the presumed meanings of familiar repertoire,” said Academy Artistic Director Mike Cheng-Yu Lee, visiting scholar and artist-in-residence at Cornell.

Selected as part of a competitive application process, the young artists participating in the July 31-Aug. 7 academy will work intimately with internationally-renowned artist-teachers, including Lee; Malcolm Bilson, professor emeritus of music in Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences; Tuija Hakkila, professor of piano, Sibelius Academy, and Roberto Poli, professor of piano, New England Conservatory of Music. Participants will have the opportunity to practice daily and perform on historical pianos from the Cornell collection.