Artist Advisory Committee

Internationally respected pianist and recording artist, Robert Hamilton has been enthusiastically reviewed by two chief music critics for The New York Times. Harold C. Schonberg, who also authored The Great Pianists, wrote: “He is a very fine artist. All of Hamilton’s playing has color and sensitivity…one of the best of the million or so around.” And Donal J. Henahan reported: “It was an enthralling listening experience. We must hear this major piano talent again, and soon!”

Hamilton studied at Indiana University with Sidney Foster. He graduated summa cum laude. A move to New York City brought studies with Dora Zaslavsky of the Manhattan School, coaching from legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz, and a host of monetary awards from the Rockefeller Fund and U.S. State Department, launching a strong career and the winning of five major international competitions.

Hamilton has made countless tours of four continents, appearing in most music capitals and has been heard over the national and international networks NPR, ABC, BBC London, Voice of America, Armed Forces Network, DRS Zurich and Radio Warsaw. He has also recorded for Phillips, Orion, Summit and Soundset recording companies. Reviewing a recent release in 2011, the All Music Guide called Hamilton’s performance “absolutely irresistible “ for its “Magnificent virtuosity”, “effortless control”, “and hair-raising bravura”. The American Record Guide lauded his recent Mozart CD as “the perfect recording of Mozart’s piano music.” for its “Almost unbelievable beauty…”.

A piano professor in the ASU School of Music, Hamilton’s students have also won many prizes and awards. Featured in the book, The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the USA, Hamilton served as artistic director for the London Piano Festival during the 1990s. Since 2000, he has joined forces with Vladimir Feltsman and a distinguished group of prominent international pianists each July for PianoSummer in New York.

Eteri Andjaparidze has performed on the world’s most prestigious concert series as guest soloist with major orchestras and leading conductors, as well as in solo and collaborative recitals. Highlights of her international festival engagements as an artist and faculty have included Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival, International Keyboard Festival and Institute in New York, Mannes College Yearlong Festival, NYU Summer Piano Intensive, Round Top International Festival-Institute, PianoSummer at New Paltz, Los Angeles International Piano Symposium, Piano Festival Northwest, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Festival International de Colmar, Duszniki-Zdroj International Chopin Festival, White Nights, and Russian Winter. Her discography on Naxos, Marco Polo, and Melodiya labels includes solo albums nominated for Grammy and Deutsche Schallplatten awards.

Currently teaching on the faculty at Mannes College of Music and New York University, she has served as Professor of Piano and Head of the Keyboard Programs at DePaul University in Chicago, taught at the State University of New York, the Moscow Tchaikovsky and Tbilisi State Conservatoires, and conducted masterclasses worldwide.

A Steinway Artist, she is founder and artistic director of The United Sounds of Americamusic festival and the AmerKlavier Studio. Born into a family of prominent musicians in Tbilisi, Georgia, she studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatoire with Vera Gornostaeva, a student of legendary Heinrich Neuhaus. 

She was the youngest participant to receive Fourth Prize at the Fifth Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow and the first Soviet pianist to win Grand Prix at the Montreal International Piano Competition. Her recognitions include International Friendship Order, Georgian Order of Honor, and People's Artist of Georgia title.

Paul Harvey Jr. is the creator and writer of one of the longest-running and most popular series in radio history, The Rest of the Story. The series features his father, veteran broadcaster Paul Harvey.

Born and raised in Chicago, Harvey received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in piano performance from Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University. Even while still in school, he began winning nationwide recognition as a concert artist and composer.

After touring successfully, Harvey established the program The Rest of the Story for ABC Radio Networks in 1976. Harvey’s meticulously researched historic and contemporary stories are eagerly anticipated by millions of Americans each day. He has also published three books on The Rest of the Story series.

Harvey created, produced, and starred in Holiday in Orange and Black in 1994 and Incident at Lexington Green in 1995, both hour-long entertainment specials for ABC. He also wrote, produced, and hosted two year-end news specials entitled American Family Album, the first airing in 1993.

In recent years, Harvey has ventured into theater as a writer, lyricist, and composer. His stage play Burton, exploring the turbulent life of actor Richard Burton, earned him critical acclaim as a playwright.

Paul Harvey Jr.was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2001.

The Boston Globe found pianist Alexander Korsantia’s interpretation of Pictures of an Exhibition to be “a performance that could annihilate all others one has heard.” And the Birmingham Post gushed that “his intensely responsive reading was shot through with a vein of constant fantasy, whether musing or mercurial.”  Ever since winning the First Prize and Gold Medal of the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and the First Prize at the Sidney International Piano Competition, Korsantia’s career has taken him to many of the world’s major concert halls, collaborating with renowned conductors and soloists such as Valery Gergiev, Gianandrea Noseda, Vadim Repin, Sakari Oramo and Paavo Jarvi and orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Kirov, City of Birmingham Symphony and Israel Philharmonic orchestras.                           

Bel Air Music has released live recordings of Mr. Korsantia on a double CD in Summer 2008. His new recording of Joseph Bardanashvili’s “Concerto quasi una fantasia” with Georgian Chamber Orchestra has been released in 2011 on Oehms Classics label. Current and coming seasons are taking Korsantia to Germany, Poland, Georgia, Italy, France, Israel and U.S. performing recitals and with Israel Symphony Orchestra, Israel Camerata, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional in Mexico City, Louisiana Philharmonic, Ingolstadt Chamber Orchestra, Mannheim, Pacific and Edmonton Symphony Orchestras among others.                                                        

In 2004 he was awarded one of the most prestigious national awards, the Medal of Honor, bestowed on him by then-President, Eduard Shevardnadze. In 2003 National TV released a full-length documentary about him. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Alexander Korsantia began his musical studies at an early age. Among his mentors are his mother, Sventlana Korsantia and Tengiz Amiredjibi, Georgia’s foremost piano instructor. In 1992, he moved his family to the United States and joined the famed piano studio of fellow Georgian, Alexander Toradze, at Indiana University. Korsantia resides in Boston where he is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory. He is an artistic director of “From Easter to Ascension” annual festival in Georgia.