Russian-American pianist Alexandre Moutouzkine has toured as a soloist with over 60 orchestras across Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Highlights of those performances include appearances with Cleveland Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, Israel Philharmonic and Israel Camerata, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Philharmonic Orchestras of Moscow and Kiev and Radiotelevision Orchestra of Spain.

As a recitalist and chamber musician, Alexandre has performed at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium and Zankel Hall, The Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The Kimmel Center, Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, Royal Hall in London, The Great Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic, Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, National Centers of Toronto and Montreal, Yokohama Minato Mirai Hall in Japan.

Alexandre’s recital at Wigmore Hall was described by International Piano magazine as “grandly organic, with many personal and pertinent insights, offering a thoughtful balance between rhetoric and fantasy…technically dazzling.” Alexandre’s recital of Frédéric Chopin’s Études at the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory was recorded live and released on the Classical Music Archives label in Russia.

Alexandre has claimed top prizes at more than 20 international competitions, including Naumburg, Cleveland, Montreal, New Orleans, Shanghai, Iturbi in Valencia, Maria Canals in Barcelona, and Arthur Rubinstein in Tel Aviv. At age 19, he won the Special Award for Artistic Potential for his performance of Brahms’ Op. 117 Intermezzi. A Dallas Morning News critic described it as being played “more beautifully, more movingly, than I’ve ever heard them. At once sad, tender and noble, this was playing of heart-stopping intimacy and elegance.”

Other career highlights include a performance of Rachmaninoff’s complete works in a six-part recital series with the Carnegie Concert Series in Nyack and the reception of the “Artist of the Season” award from Chamber Music International in Dallas.
His record of Cuban piano music released through Steinway & Sons was recognized by WRTI as one of the top 10 classical music recordings picks for 2017. It also won the Cubadisco award for the best classical music recording in Cuba. Alexandre most recently released a Steinway and Sons recording, “Ravel & Stravinsky” with violinist Chloé Kiffer. This album features his solo piano transcription of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, which debuted at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and New York’s 92Y.
Alexandre has served as an adjudicator for the Concours International Genève Musicale, Bartok Competition in Budapest, Maria Canals in Barcelona, Santa Cecilia in Porto, Panama International Piano Competition, New Orleans International Piano Competition, and Vladimir Krainev Competition in Moscow.

Alexandre is co-head of the piano department at Manhattan School of Music. His students have won top prizes in numerous competitions throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. He is a sought-after teacher and guest artist at music festivals around the world including Beijing International Piano Festival, Paris International Music Academy and MusicAlp Festival in France, Music Fest Perugia, Forum Musicae in Madrid, and the International Piano Festival Genève Musicale.

A native of Montana, pianist Elinor Freer has built a versatile career as an pianist, educator and creative musician. Praised for her “utmost sensitivity” (Harrisburg Patriot News) and “profound commitment and understanding” (General-Anzeiger, Bonn) Ms. Freer has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Mexico, and China, including appearances at The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, The Valery Gergiev Festival in Rotterdam, the Gnessin Institute in Moscow, the Akademie múzických in Prague, and more. Her performances have aired on “Performance Today,” National Public Radio, and she has recorded for Cedille Records. Recently she performed and served as a member of the jury at the Macao International Piano Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

Ms. Freer has been the recipient of numerous prizes, awards, and fellowships including those from the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, American Pianists Association Auditions, the Steans Institute of the Ravinia Festival, and the Tanglewood Music Center. She holds degrees with honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music, the University of Southern California, and, as a Frank Huntington Beebe scholar, a Performer’s Diploma from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht in The Netherlands. She feels a immense debt of gratitude towards her former teachers and coaches, including Paul Schenly, John Perry, Kyoko Hashimoto, Peter Serkin and Gilbert Kalish.

Passionate about finding ways to use her musical skills to make a difference, she founded and directed residencies in rural Kansas and Montana, bringing live music onto street corners and into schools, psychiatric hospitals, banks, and even grocery stores. In 2024 she founded ROC City Concerts at the Eastman School of Music, a series of live concerts for underserved populations in Rochester, NY, which includes student and faculty performances at a local prison, juvenile detention center, substance abuse treatment facility, veteran’s home, and more. In addition, she has been partnering with researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center to develop a piano training intervention for older adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Early results show promising data on the effects of piano lessons on cognitive health. Ms. Freer currently serves as Associate Professor of Piano and Chamber Music at the Eastman School of Music where she received the 2025 Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching.

James Giles regularly performs in important musical centers in America, Europe, and Asia as a recitalist and chamber musician. He is coordinator of the piano program and director of music performance graduate studies at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, where his class of students has featured many prize-winning young artists.

In an eclectic repertoire encompassing the solo and chamber music literatures, Giles is equally at home in the standard repertoire as in the music of our time. He has commissioned and premiered works by William Bolcom, C. Curtis-Smith, Stephen Hough, Lowell Liebermann, Ned Rorem, Augusta Read Thomas, Earl Wild, and James Wintle. Most of these new works are featured on Giles’s Albany Records release entitled “American Virtuoso.” His recording of solo works by Schumann and Prokofiev is available on England’s Master Musicians label. He recorded John Harbison’s Horn Trio with the Chicago Chamber Musicians and Timothy Dunne’s Piano Concerto with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic in Russia.

His Paris recital at the Salle Cortot in was hailed as “a true revelation, due equally to the pianist’s artistry as to his choice of program.” After a recital at the Sibelius Academy, the critic for Helsinki’s main newspaper wrote that “Giles is a technically polished, elegant pianist.” And a London critic called his Wigmore Hall recital “one of the most sheerly inspired piano recitals I can remember hearing for some time” and added that “with a riveting intelligence given to everything he played, it was the kind of recital you never really forget.”
He has performed with New York’s Jupiter Symphony (Alkan and Czerny); the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra in Queen Elizabeth Hall (Mozart and Beethoven); the Kharkiv Philharmonic in Ukraine (Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff); and with the Opera Orchestra of New York in Alice Tully Hall (Chopin). After his Tully Hall solo recital debut, critic Harris Goldsmith wrote: “Giles has a truly distinctive interpretive persona. This was beautiful pianism – direct and unmannered.” Other tours have included concerts in the Shanghai International Piano Festival; St. Petersburg’s White Nights New Music Festival, Warsaw’s Chopin Academy of Music; Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Series, Salt Lake City’s Assembly Hall Concert Series, and in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Musikhalle in Hamburg, and the Purcell Room at London’s South Bank Centre. He has given live recitals over the public radio stations of New York, Boston, Chicago, and Indianapolis. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with members of the National and Chicago Symphonies and with members of the Escher, Pacifica, Cassatt, Chicago, Ying, Chester, St. Lawrence, Essex, Lincoln, and Miami Quartets, as well as singers Aprile Millo and Anthony Dean Griffey.

A native of North Carolina, Dr. Giles studied with Byron Janis at the Manhattan School of Music, Jerome Lowenthal at the Juilliard School, Nelita True at the Eastman School of Music, and Robert Shannon at Oberlin College. He received early career assistance from the Clarisse B. Kampel Foundation and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Italy with the legendary pianist Lazar Berman.

The pianist was the recipient of a fellowship grant and the Christel Award from the American Pianists Association. He won first prizes at the New Orleans International Piano Competition, the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, and the Music Teachers National Association Competition. As a student he was awarded the prestigious William Petschek Scholarship at the Juilliard School and the Arthur Dann Award at the Oberlin College Conservatory. He wrote for Piano and Keyboard magazine and has presented lecture-recitals at the national conventions of the Music Teachers National Association, the College Music Society, and Pi Kappa Lambda. He regularly serves on competition jury panels and has been conference artist for many state music teachers associations.

He gives master classes and lectures at schools nationwide, including Juilliard, Manhattan, Eastman, Oberlin, Indiana, Yale, and New England. During the summers he is director of the Amalfi Coast Music Festival and has taught at the Gijon Piano Festival, Obidos Master Classes, Artcial Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Bowdoin, Brevard, Art of the Piano, Colburn, Interlochen, ARIA, Pianofest in the Hamptons, and the Schlern Festival in Italy. His classes internationally have occurred throughout China as well as at Seoul National University, Hanyang University (Seoul), Ewha Woman’s University (Seoul), the Royal Danish Academy of Music (Copenhagen), the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki), the Chopin Academy (Warsaw), the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester) and the Royal College of Music (London).