Noonday Concert

About the artist:

Eric Siepkes was born in 1983 in Pittsburgh, PA, and began studying piano in 1998 after his initial studies as an organist. He won first prize for piano that same year in the Century Club Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. In 1999 he began studies in both piano and chamber music at City Music Center at Duquesne University’s School of Music in Pittsburgh, with Professor Igor Krayevsky. In the summer of 1999 he was accepted as a student at Chautauqua Institution School of Fine Art for piano studies with a scholarship from the National Federation of Music Clubs, and spent 5 summers studying piano at Chautauqua.

In 2002, Siepkes began piano performance studies with Rebecca Penneys at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY for his Bachelor of Music Degree. On admission to the Eastman School, he received the George Eastman Grant and the Howard Hanson Scholarship. He also studied harpsichord and organ as a secondary instrument at Eastman, and feels that experience with predecessors of the modern piano has strongly influenced his approach to early performance practices.

In 2005 he was awarded the Joseph Lawrence Noble Scholarship at Eastman for his pianistic merits, as well as a prize in the 11th Chautauqua International Piano Competition for the best performance of a lyric work, performing Schubert. In 2006, he won the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition in NYC and subsequently made his debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, with another invitation to perform there in 2007.

Siepkes has performed in master classes for Richard Goode, Angela Hewitt, and Natalya Antonova, and has played in chamber music master classes for London Baroque, the Avalon String Quartet, and the Eroica Trio. In 1999 he was featured in a chamber music performance on WQED Radio, Pittsburgh. In 2007 he won Best Collaborative Pianist award in the Lansing Matinee Musicale Club, of the National Federation of Music Clubs. Also in 2007 Siepkes was awarded Honorable Mention in the 5 Towns Music & Art Foundation Competition.

In 2010 Siepkes co-organized a “Mozart Festival” at the Allegheny River Stone Center for the Arts near Pittsburgh, PA which included educational outreach to local public schools, as well as informal lectures and performances for the general public. In 2013 he organized a series entitled “Meditating Bach”, in which he collaborated with fellow artists in performing Bach’s Six Sonatas for Violin and Clavier, and gave an informal talk on the influence that Bach’s Christian faith had on his compositions.

Artist’s website: www.ericsiepkes.com