Edmund Arkus has performed for many years in the United States, Japan, and England to high critical acclaim. He has been presented in solo recitals, as soloist with orchestras, and has collaborated in many chamber music concerts and sonata recitals. Having started the piano at three years of age with his first teacher, his mother, Helena Arkus, he then studied at The Juilliard pre-college program for six years, then entered The Juilliard School again to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees under the guidance of Mme. Rosina Lhévinne. After graduation, he polished his skills with the great Wolfgang Rosé, nephew of Gustav Mahler.

Edmund has performed on radio in New York on WNYC, WQXR, WFUV, as well as live performances broadcast over National Public Radio from The Phillips Collection in Washington DC, WGBH Boston, BBC radio in England, and NHK TV in Japan. Over a 15-year period until 2014, Edmund collaborated regularly with Keisuke Wakao, assistant principal oboist of the Boston Symphony. Among numerous concerts they presented, Edmund and Keisuke performed together at Jordan Hall in Boston, at Opera City Recital Hall and Hillside Terrace Plaza Hall in Tokyo. Over that time, Edmund performed chamber music concerts with Keisuke, and members of the Boston Symphony, NHK Orchestra of Tokyo, Berlin, and Ogaki, Japan, Seoul, South Korea, as well as in Cleveland, Ohio, the Berkshires, and Boston Massachusetts.

Edmund has performed live on NHK TV at Opera City in Tokyo, in a duo concert with double-bass player Shigeru Ishikawa, grandnephew of the renowned teacher and founder of the prominent Suzuki Method: Shinichi Suzuki. Edmund and Keisuke visited the Emperor of Japan, Akihito and the Empress Michiko for a private afternoon repast and concert at their residence in Tokyo, 2008. A very special day! Edmund’s hands appeared as a piano double in the Amazon series “Mozart in the Jungle”.

Marcia Eckert (Director), a native of Terre Haute, Indiana, is active as piano soloist and collaborative artist and has appeared in the Mostly Mozart Festival, as well as at Merkin, Alice Tully, and Weill concert halls, and London's Leighton House. She has been referred to as "a pianist of impressive skill and sensitivity, the sort of keyboard collaborator that every instrumentalist dreams of" (Scott Cantrell, Albany Times-Union). She has travelled throughout the United States presenting lecture-recitals on piano music by women composers and on the music of Charles Ives. Recordings include chamber music by Debra Kaye on the CDs And So It Begins and Ikarus; Short Songs to the Poetry of William Blake by Nailah Nombeko, with soprano Sara Paar; Tailleferre - Musique de Chambre with violinist Ruth Ehrlich; Songs by Women with soprano Susan Gonzalez; and 20th Century Music for Recorder and Piano with Anita Randolfi. Ms. Eckert performs with the Eckert/Gilwood Piano Duo and with Sara Paar, soprano. Previous groups have included Trio della Luna, Trio laBella, Aurelia Piano Quartet, Albany Chamber Players, Polyhymnia, Sarasa, and Dulcinea Piano Trio. She has given numerous premieres, including works by Eleanor Cory, Ursula Mamlok, and Roger Zahab. Ms.Eckert has served on the keyboard, chamber music and theory faculty of Hunter College, where she was a 1998 recipient of the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has been teaching piano andchamber music in the Mannes College of Music Preparatory Division since 1983. Her prize-winning students have been accepted to conservatories including Oberlin, Juilliard, Mannes, Thornton, and Ithaca, and summer festivals including Art of the Piano, BUTI at Tanglewood, Aspen Music Festival, Meadowmount, and Bowdoin Musical Festival. In 2022, her student Sawyer Dahlen was chosen to perform the world premiere of the Piano Teachers Congress commissioned piece at Weill Recital Hall inthe PTC Honors Program Winners recital. Ms Eckert is the founder and director of the summer piano intensive Pianophoria!, which began in 2004. Ms. Eckert holds degrees in Piano Performance from Indiana University School of Music (magna cum laude) and State University of New York at Stony Brook. Teachers have included Jorge Bolet, Gilbert Kalish, Claude Frank, William Masselos, Seymour Bernstein,Luis Batlle, and Lucy Greene. She has participated as a fellow at the Berkshire Music Center atTanglewood and Yale School of Music Summer Chamber Music Festival and attended the Aspen and Interlochen Music Festivals. http://marciaeckert.com

Steinway Artist Tania Tachkova has been praised by critics for performances that are “white-hot” and“very impressive”. She has appeared in concert throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand as a soloist and in chamber concerts at such venues as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, Steinway Hall New York, Wiener Saal at Mozarteum, Henri Selmer Hall in Paris, Grand Bulgaria Hall and the National Palace of Culture in Bulgaria, to name a few. Her solo engagements include the Orchestra of the State Academy of Music in Bulgaria, Shoumen Philharmonic, Razgrad Philharmonic, and the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra. Festival appearances include Aspen Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, and New Music on the Bayou Summer Festival. Tachkova's performances have been broadcast on radio and television, including WQXR, WITF, WPRB, and Bulgarian National Television. Her recordings include critically acclaimed chamber music CDs released by MSR and Centaur Records and extensive solo and four-hand repertoire for Steinway Spirio. As the pianist of duo per se (with clarinetist Scot Humes) she has performed in recital throughout the United States, in Paris (France), in Sydney (Australia), and in Christchurch and Auckland (New Zealand). Tachkova's students consistently earn many accolades, winning various international and national competitions. Her students have performed at Carnegie Hall's Weill and Zankel recital halls as well as Steinway Hall New York as competition winners. In addition, she has presented numerous master classes at various universities in the United States as well as the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Australia, and has adjudicated many international and national competitions in the United States and in New Zealand. Tachkova holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in piano performance from Stony Brook University.