Liza Stepanova
Biography Liza Stepanova
Liza Stepanova
Praised by The New York Times for her “thoughtful musicality” and “fleet-fingered panache,” Liza Stepanova has performed at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Weill and Zankel recital halls at Carnegie Hall; Alice Tully, Merkin, David Geffen, and Steinway halls in New York City and at the Kennedy Center. She has appeared as a soloist with conductors James DePreist and Nicholas McGegan and live on WQXR New York, WFMT Chicago, and WETA Washington.
2019-2020 concert highlights include invitations to the Bowdoin Music Festival and Prague Piano Festival, solo recitals at USF Steinway Piano Series and East Carolina University Piano Series, and chamber music tours with the Lysander Piano Trio, winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, in Canada, Mexico, and across the US at Spivey Hall in Atlanta, the Crescent City Festival in New Orleans, Norton Museum in Palm Beach, and more. Stepanova is one of the founders of the Chamber Music Athens festival in Georgia and has been actively involved in performance, teaching and administration of the annual event. At the 2020 CMA, she will give the world premiere of a new substantial chamber music work by Lowell Liebermann, which was commissioned especially for her with her ensemble, the Yargo Trio.
Stepanova’s debut solo album Tones & Colors: Music and Visual Art (CAG Records, 2018), recorded with Grammy-winning producer Adam Abeshouse, was featured on Performance Today, in the BBC Music Magazine, and in recital at New York City’s National Sawdust. Her most recent project E Pluribus Unum (Navona Records, 2020) features piano music by contemporary immigrant composers, including three world-premiere recordings. Previous recordings with her numerous ensembles and partners include The Garden: Vocal Chamber Music by Tom Cipullo (Albany Records, 2018), praised by the American Record Guide for the “excellent performances … by the composer’s ‘dream team of interpreters’” and Lysander Piano Trio’s After A Dream (CAG Records, 2014), lauded by The New York Times for its “polished and spirited interpretations.”
Stepanova has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at international festivals at Castleton, La Jolla, Music@Menlo, Mostly Mozart, Copenhagen (Denmark), and Davos (Switzerland), where she had opportunities to collaborate with leading artists including violinist Cho-Liang Lin, violist James Dunham, clarinetist Charles Neidich, soprano Lucy Shelton, mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer and members of the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and the Atlanta Symphony. Deeply committed to new music, she has premiered works by Jennifer Higdon and Libby Larsen and worked with composers William Bolcom, Gabriela Lena Frank, and John Harbison. Liza Stepanova studied art song collaboration with Wolfram Rieger in Berlin and was invited by the late Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau to perform in several of his master classes including the Hugo-Wolf-Tage festival in Austria. Since 2010, Stepanova has been on the faculty at SongFest at The Colburn School in Los Angeles and also served as the festival’s Associate Artistic Director and Piano Program Director for two years.
Stepanova holds degrees from the “Hanns Eisler” Academy in Berlin, Germany (BM) and The Juilliard School (MM, DMA) where she studied with Joseph Kalichstein, Seymour Lipkin, Jerome Lowenthal, and George Sava. Following teaching positions at Juilliard and Smith College, Stepanova is currently an associate professor of piano at the University of Georgia. Her UGA students have been invited to the Aspen, Bowdoin, Chautauqua, Piano Texas, and Salzburg Mozarteum summer programs, have been admitted to elite graduate programs, and consistently win competitions and awards.
