Reinhardt Piano Festival
Reinhardt Piano Festival
June 2 – June 8, 2025
Dr. Alexander Wasserman
Assistant Professor of Music (Piano)
Academy Faculty
Dr. Alexander Wasserman is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Reinhardt Piano Festival and Assistant Professor of Music at Reinhardt University. His recent recital performances include the cities of Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, La Jolla, Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Santa Barbara. His performances have been broadcast on television and classical radio stations. As a soloist with orchestra, Dr. Wasserman has performed concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Gershwin. Dr. Wasserman has also served as Professor of Piano at Youngstown State University (OH) and is a member of the music faculty and Artist-in-Residence at Reinhardt University. Dr. Wasserman received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Dr. Wasserman’s students have been winners of regional, national and international competitions, including MTNA Senior Division (1st prize), GMEA, GMTA (1st prize), Rising Stars, Osaka International Piano Competition, Nashville International Piano Competition (bronze medal), AMTA Romantic and Impressionistic competition (grand prize), GMTA (1st prize), Ruth Kern Concerto Competition, Rome Symphony Concerto Competition, and many others. Dr. Wasserman is a Shigeru Kawai Artist.
Dr. Mason Conklin
Festival Faculty
Dr. N. Mason Conklin is an Assistant Professor of Music at Reinhardt University’s School of Performing Arts, where he teaches piano pedagogy, class piano, theory, and music technology. He has received degrees in Piano Performance from Baylor University and a Ph.D. in Music Education with an emphasis in Piano Pedagogy from the University of Oklahoma. He is active in the Cherokee Music Teachers Association, a local chapter of the Music Teachers National Association, and is recognized by that organization as a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music. He has presented at local, state, and national conferences, is a member of the editorial committee for the American Music Teacher magazine, and is a regularly sought-out adjudicator and clinician. Dr. Conklin and his wife Jessica Conklin are co-owners of Conklin Studios and have provided innovative group classes for the young beginner, private instruction for the late elementary and advancing piano students, and recreational music-making for active adults. He is an adherent of the music educational philosophy of Jean- Jacques Dalcroze and strongly advocates for complete musicianship including playing by ear, improvisation, theory and composition, technic, reading and performance. He believes that with passion, an entrepreneurial spirit and proper training, anyone can have an exciting and lucrative career in music.
Zsolt Bognár
Zsolt Bognár’s sold-out 2012 Berlin debut at the Young Euro Classic Festival at the Konzerthaus in Gendarmenmarkt is described by The German Press as “intellectually shaped, powerful, and of crystalline precision.” His performances in America, Europe, and Asia have been described by European critics as “overwhelmingly visceral… a phenomenal sound world realized through maximum palette.” Following debut performances in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Munich, Brussels, Vienna, and Tokyo, Bognár released a much-lauded first CD album of works by Schubert and Liszt in 2013. His musical collaborations and diverse projects, including a week of study with Martha Argerich supported by an International Festival Society Grant, also feature international speaking engagements, publications, and residencies in performance series and universities.
Michael Finlay
Dr. Michael Finlay is an accomplished pianist and teacher who has performed all over North America. His former students have gone on to such prestigious music schools as Indiana University, Peabody Conservatory, and the University of Montréal. He has twice been listed as a Gold Medal Teacher by the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He specializes in injury prevention and piano technique, a subject on which he has given lectures all around the country. Dr. Finlay holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Master’s from the Peabody Institute, and a Doctorate from the University of Montreal.
Frank Huang
Frank Huang is a Steinway Artist and currently serves as an Associate Professor of Piano at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. Previously, he was a faculty member at The College of Wooster and The Cleveland Institute of Music.
A native of Seattle, WA, Frank Huang studied extensively with Willard Schultz at the Academy of Music Northwest before obtaining Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, where he continued his studies with Julian Martin. Following his training at Juilliard, he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at The Cleveland Institute of Music under the direction of Antonio Pompa-Baldi. Other influential teachers included Lee Kum-Sing, Robert McDonald, Daniel Shapiro, and Dominique Weber. Huang has also participated in masterclasses with eminent musicians of our time including Nelita True, Byron Janis, Jon Kimura Parker, Richard Goode, and Murray Perahia.
Equally dedicated as a music educator, Dr. Huang feels privileged to share his knowledge with students who are passionate about music. At Miami University, he teaches piano, chamber music, and various literature courses. Dr. Huang has been invited to present master classes in various institutions across the United States as well as an adjudicator at local piano competitions and auditions.
Michael Schneider
Julia Siciliano
Award-winning concert pianist, Julia Siciliano has been heralded as a musician with “fabulous creative power” by the Bonn General-Anzeiger. Ms. Siciliano has become a well-respected and anticipated rising talent on the world stage, being invited as a solo artist by many prestigious orchestras, and festivals, most recently with the Orquestra Sinfónica de la Region de Murcia for the MurciArt Music Festival. A winner of many local and international piano competitions, Julia has won top prizes at the Sicily International Piano Competition, Heida Hermanns International Competition, Iowa Piano Competition, and MTNA National Competition. A highly active chamber musician, Julia has been invited to perform in concert series and festivals with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players and is a regular on the Euskadiko Orchestra (Basque National Orchestra)’s chamber music series “Miramon Matinees”, the Malmö Symphony Orchestra chamber music series, and the MurciArt Festival in Murcia, Spain. She has given recitals with Metropolitan Opera stars Amanda Pabyan, Eric Owens, and Marina Domashenko, and internationally acclaimed violinists Dmitri Makhtin, Simone Lamsma, and Birgit Kolar. Most notably, Julia performed the complete “accompanied sonatas” of Beethoven in the year 2020 at the Teatro Victoria Eugenia in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, and in various venues throughout the United States, France, and Sweden.
Julia has an active performing career in both solo and chamber music capacities across stages in North America, Central America, Europe, and Asia. She has performed multiple times live on Chicago radio station WFMT, Detroit’s historic Scarab Club, Cincinnati Music Hall, the Bulgarian Consulate in New York City, Teatro Nacional of Guatemala, MalmöLive in Malmö, Sweden, Teatro Victoria Eugenia in San Sebastián, Spain, Palazzo Biscari in Catania, Italy, Parvis de l’église Notre-Dame d’Espérance in Cannes, Deutsche Telekom Headquarters in Bonn, Rachmaninov Hall in Moscow, and Kioi Hall in Tokyo.
Her debut solo album “Dream Catchers”, a two-disc album featuring small-scale works by Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Ravel, and Debussy, released in 2016 to great acclaim. Fanfare Magazine declared “this release has merit as a career milestone” and leaves “no doubt about the devotion and seriousness of Siciliano’s approach to music.” Gramophone Magazine praised her “fine technique and natural musicality” pinpointing her “masterful delicacy, harmonic motion, and timing” in Debussy’s Images II.
Siciliano holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Nelita True, and the University of Michigan, where she studied with Logan Skelton.
