Founders

Giacomo Scinardo

FOUNDER

Italian concert pianist, recording artist and artistic director of the Italian label Dynamic, piano professor at the Conservatory of Brescia, Giacomo Scinardo has performed worldwide, and has been broadcast on international classical radio stations including Rai Radio 3, BBC Radio 3, Radio France, and Radio România Muzical.

At a very young age, Scinardo received many awards in national and international piano competitions.

Since 2007 he has appeared in hundreds of concerts at prestigious venues such as the Salle Cortot in Paris, the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, the Rachmaninov Concert Hall at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the Ateneul Român in Bucharest, the Auditorium of the Swiss Radio in Lugano, the Auditorium RAI Arturo Toscanini, Turin, the Siam Ratchada Auditorium of Bangkok, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, Totsuka Municipal Concert Hall of Yokohama, Shiodome Bechstein Hall in Tokyo, Youth Square-Y-Theatre in Hong Kong.

Scinardo has given masterclasses and recitals worldwide, including at the prestigious Gnessin State Musical College and the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, as well as the University of Michigan School of Music.

His recordings received remarkable reviews and were able to achieve more than 20 millions of streams.

Yin Zheng

CO-FOUNDER

Concert pianist Yin Zheng, currently Associate Professor of Piano at the Virginia Commonwealth University, enjoys a vibrant career of performing and teaching across Europe, US, and Asia. She has been featured on leading music stages such as Carnegie Hall and Steinway Hall in New York, the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and, in worldwide reputable music festivals in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Canada, and Estonia.

She has worked with eminent pianists such as Paul-Badura Skoda, Alicia de Larrocha, and Aldo Ciccolini and is highly appraised by the legendary British-Chinese pianist Fou Tsong as a unique interpreter of the music of Mozart. Natively from Shanghai, China, she earned degrees from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels under Dominique Cornil and the Doctorate of Musical Arts under Nelita True from the Eastman School of Music. She is first-prize winners in national and international competitions held in New York; she was invited as the first pianist from the North America to perform at the Kirovohrad Spring Music Festival in Ukraine. Dr. Zheng regularly appears as guest performer and teacher throughout both U.S. and international higher institutions including: University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Shanghai Normal University, Kasetsart and Mahidol University College of Music in Bangkok, University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to name a few. Critically acclaimed, her CD-set Complete Sonatas for Piano and Violin by W.A. Mozart (Vermeer/Naxos) was recorded at the University Mozarteum Salzburg upon extensive research at the International Mozart Foundation.

Together with her violin partner Bin Huang, gold medalist of Paganini International Competition, she performed the entire cycle twice in the US and made a featured appearance at the prestigious Shanghai Spring Music Festival where the live recordings were made and broadcasted in US, China, Australia and United Arab Emirates.

The interview series and rave reviews on the concert were published on the Lifeweek Magazine of China that reaches over 13 million readers online. Dr. Zheng made her solo and chamber music debut concert tour in Colombia, China and Taiwan in 2015- 17, and presented concerts, workshops and masterclasses in Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Iran. Her 2018-19 season highlighted a debut solo concerto performance with the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, a research and recording project in Paris, and a featured artist appearance and competition adjudication at the West Virginia Music Teachers’ Association Conference.

Her post-Covid schedules unfold with a guest residency at the EAFIT Piano Festival in Medellín, Colombia, a series of concerts in Italy and a solo debut recording on piano works of Joseph Jongen. Dr. Zheng is an avid explorer for innovative art forms and creative cross-disciplinary collaborations: She has ventured into the third-stream by performing with jazz violinist supreme Regina Carter; She worked with acclaimed French-Canadian painter/filmmaker Jean Detheux in collaborations that have been featured in both international film festivals and at the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music.

She is a frequent adjudicator for American MTNA Competitions and also the founder and Artistic Director of the Global Summer Institute of Music @ VCU, an international summer music festival based in Richmond.