Sun Valley Artist Series info@svartistseries.org PO Box 1379 Sun Valley, ID 83353
Sun Valley Artist Series is funded in part by a grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts
Johnandrew Slominski, piano
By 21, Slominski earned three degrees from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, including a Master of Music in Performance and Literature, a Master of Arts in Pedagogy of Music Theory, and a Bachelor of Music in Performance; his first professorship followed two years later. He was unanimously nominated for Eastman's coveted Performer's Certificate in recognition of outstanding concert artistry--the youngest individual to have received such an honor. Slominski holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, also from the Eastman School of Music. In 2009 he was awarded the Prize for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student, and 2010 Slominski received the Jerald C. Graue Musicology Fellowship in recognition for his research in the field of nineteenth-century performance practice.
His innovative performance and pedagogical research has been supported by institutions including the Classics Abroad Society and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Slominski is the founder and director of "Classical Music on the Spot", an intensive summer institute at the Eastman School of Music, dedicated to the study and practice of eighteenth-century style improvisation.
Slominski is a frequent solo performer, collaborative pianist, masterclass clinician, and lecturer. Praised in print for his virtuosity, innovative programming, and broad repertoire, he performs throughout the United States and abroad; he has been recently featured as a guest artist at the Chautauqua Institution for Fine and Performing Arts, the Sarasota Music Festival, the Dakota Sky International Piano Festival, the Sunderman Recital Series at Gettysburg College, Steinway Hall, and the St. Petersburg College Piano Series, while international performances have included recitals at the Jan Deyl Conservatory in Prague, Czech Republic, and the Salle Cortot in Paris, France. As a competition laureate, Slominski was awarded first prize in the Chautauqua International Piano Competition and was the silver medalist in the International Keyboard Odyssiad Piano Competition.
As an advocate for historical performance practices and new music, Slominski has received glowing praise from critics and composers. British composer Ann Cherry commented following Slominski's 2012 world premiere of her Sonata for Flute and Piano with flutist Tabatha Easley that "This man has a rare ability - the musicality - to dig beneath the written notes to reveal the underlying meaning. I did not dare to imagine that such a great performance could ever happen." His recordings have been broadcast domestically by National Public Radio and are published by Oxford University Press. His principal studies at the Eastman School were with Rebecca Penneys; additional teachers have included Robert Levin, John Perry, Steven Laitz, Dorothy Fahlman, Malcolm Bilson, Joseph Silverstein, and Jean-Francois Antonioli.
Slominski has held teaching positions at the University of Rochester, the Sunderman Conservatory at Gettysburg College, and Virginia Commonwealth University. His students have been accepted to prestigious undergraduate and graduate programs with scholarship at schools including the Eastman School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, and the North Carolina School for the Arts. Slominski teaches during the summer months at the Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival at the University of South Florida, and serves as an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.