Adjudicators
David Shimoni
Pianist David Shimoni is a soloist, collaborative artist, and teacher with extensive experience performing and teaching throughout the United States. He has appeared in recital in New York’s Zankel Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Museum of Modern Art. He has also been featured at the Barns at Wolf Trap, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and the Dallas Museum of Art. He has been a guest artist at the Chautauqua, Brevard, Moab, Foothills, Golandsky, and Rockport music festivals, and his performances have been broadcast on radio stations WGBH-Boston, WFMT-Chicago, and WQXR-New York. He was the first-prize winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs’ Young Artist Auditions, Five Towns Young Musicians Competition, and Beethoven Piano Sonata Competition.
Sought after for his skills as a collaborator, Dr. Shimoni has performed with the Jupiter String Quartet, New York Festival of Song, Southeastern Festival of Song, and Toronto Dance Theatre. He has accompanied singers under the auspices of the Marilyn Horne Foundation, Concert Artists Guild, and the Juilliard School’s Alice Tully Hall Vocal Debut Recital. He also completed eighteen educational and outreach tours throughout the United States in affiliation with the Piatigorsky Foundation. During the 2020 COVID pandemic, he played 100 performances as one of two pianists in On Site Opera’s project To My Distant Love.
Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Dr. Shimoni attended the North Carolina School of the Arts in high school, earned a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College, and obtained masters degrees in both solo and collaborative performance from the Juilliard School. He completed a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His teachers have included Robert McDonald, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Marc Durand, Edna Golandsky, Ilya Itin, and Constance Kotis.
Dr. Shimoni has been on the teaching and accompanying staff of The Juilliard School, Brooklyn College, the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the Ravinia Steans Institute. He has also given master classes and educational workshops throughout the United States and was invited to give presentations on his use of the Taubman Approach at the World Piano Pedagogy Conference. He presently maintains a private piano studio in New York. Since 2020, he has been on the music faculty of Point CounterPoint, a chamber music camp for advanced high school students on Lake Dunmore in Vermont. His students have won awards in competitions of the Piano Teachers Congress of New York and Royal Conservatory of Music and have gone on to study music at Oberlin Conservatory, St. Olaf College, Amherst College, European American Musical Alliance, and Madeline Island Chamber Music. In addition to teaching classical pianists on the accompanying staff at the Mannes School of Music and New York University, he has also taught Broadway music directors and Grammy Award-winning/nominated songwriters. He resides with his wife, soprano Jennifer Zetlan, and their two daughters in New York City.
Margrit Julia Zimmermann
Margrit Julia Zimmermann is winner of many international piano competitions, including the International Johannes Brahms Competition in Austria and International Piano Competition in Roma, in Italy. An important part of her career has been as a performing artist through recitals, solo performances with orchestras and as a chamber musician. Her extensive tours through U.S. and Europe have featured performances from New York’s David Geffen Hall in the Lincoln Center, to the Rachmaninoff Hall in Moscow, to the great hall of the Graz Musichochschule in Austria, Great Hall of Vilnius Philharmonie (Lithuania), and Sala Beethoven, and Teatro Isauro Martinez (Mexico).
Highlights of the concert seasons including performances with Kaliningrad Philharmonic orchestra, Chamber Orchestra Richercar in Moscow, Kasseler Symphony Orchestra in Germany, in addition to the Harleshäuser Kammermusik Orchestra in Germany. Furthermore, Margrit’s recent solo recitals have been performed at Festivals such as the Nord-Hessen Kultursommer (Germany), Bad Berger Musiktage (Germany), Eutineer Sommerkonzerte (Germany), Imshausen Schlosskonzerte (Germany), Sandershausen International Piano Festival (Germany), Rotterdam Festival of modern Musik (Nederland), and the Vilnius Summer Festival (Lithuania).
As an avid chamber musician, she is features in numerous highly-acclaimed recordings with instrumentalists and vocalists alike: Art Songs with Mikhail Svetlov (Hartshorn Classical), Works for Flute and Piano: L.Boulanger, V.Janárčekova, B.Heller (SALTO record, Germany), Works for Violin and Piano: A.Schnittke, O.Balakauskas and A.Pärt on ProSound Record and ASV Record (UK). As a soloist with the orchestra: Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra of O.Balakauskas on BIS Record (Sweden).
Margrit Julia Zimmermann is a winner of the Arts Prize of the Wolfgang-Zippel Foundation. She was a founder and for many years Artistic Director of the International Music Festival "Cascades" and long term Artist-in-Residence of Alliance University in New York.
Margrit Julia Zimmermann was born into family with deep musical roots. Her grandaunt Irina Deringer was teacher at famous Gnessina School in Moscow, grand uncle Julius Deringer was a singer at the Moscow Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenco Academic Music Theatre, and her great grand uncle A.F.Jensen was a teacher of famous pianist Samuel Feinberg.
Margrit Julia Zimmermann is a graduate of Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory where she studied with Prof Dmitri Bashkirov. She was greatly influenced by the assistant of Prof. A.Goldenweiser, pianist Lea Levinson After graduation she was private student of Prof. Lev Naumov, and pianist Sergei Babayan.
