PianoArts Competition Spotlights Best Of North America

Photo from PianoArts.

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” goes the old joke. Music teachers love to remind their students of the punchline: “Practice, practice, practice.”

For serious music students hoping to turn pro, the route to the concert hall often includes both hours in the practice room and entry into competitions. Competitions help to build a musician’s résumé, provide performance and feedback opportunities, and, for winners, award cash prizes that help underwrite the cost of a conservatory education.

Since 1999, Milwaukee’s PianoArts organization has held piano competitions to identify, showcase and guide young pianists at a turning point in their artistic lives. The 2026 edition, May 27-June 2, brings eight competitors to the city for a week of public performances before three distinguished judges. Audiences will enjoy performances by extraordinarily talented young pianists and, perhaps, hear an up-and-coming star at the birth of a career.

Welcoming pianists ages 17-22 from any country who are studying piano in North America, the 2026 PianoArts competition began with a preliminary video round. Over several days, jurors evaluated videos of each entrant’s performance of a full piano concerto and 30 minutes of solo repertoire. The eight contestants jurors advanced to the semifinal round include students at conservatories throughout the U.S., among them pianists from Vietnam, China and Israel.

In Milwaukee, a new group of jurors will hear each semifinalist perform three times: a 45-minute solo recital, a 45-minute duo recital with a string player from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and a half-hour lecture recital featuring the first movement of a piano concerto. Three finalists, chosen by jurors Simone Dinnerstein, Alexander Korsantia, and Marian Hahn, will play a full piano concerto on Tuesday, June 2, with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, conducted by William Eddins, at the Bradley Symphony Center. Prizes totaling $35,000 will be awarded that evening.

Professional MSO musicians will work closely with the semifinalists during the competition. String players Dylana Leung, Kyung Ah Oh, Scott Tisdel, Madeleine Kabat and Elliot Lee will rehearse and perform with the contestants for the duo recitals. Collaborating with professionals makes the PianoArts competition especially rewarding for contestants, said PianoArts founder and executive director Sue Medford. Playing sonatas as equal partners with the string players, the contestants “bring their own performance to the soloist’s artistic level,” she said. For the three finalists, “They’ll see familiar faces when they walk on the stage to perform with the Milwaukee Symphony.”

Contestants also will receive coaching to strengthen their verbal communication with audiences. They’ll work with local actor Doug Jarecki to polish comments they make about the music during their concerts.

Bookending the competition are a prelude concert on May 27 by 2024 PianoArts first-place winner Lucas Amory with MSO clarinetist Jay Shankar and a “Concert by the Masters” on June 1. It features juror Dinnerstein, MSO string players Yuka Kadota, Jennifer Startt and Tisdel, recently retired violist Robert Levine, and preliminary round juror Michael Mizrahi. The public is invited to attend both performances.

PianoArts competition concerts are held at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Peck School of the Arts at UW-Milwaukee and Bradley Symphony Center. The full schedule and tickets are available here.