The Russian-American pianist Sergey Schepkin has performed around the globe, from the United States to Russia to Japan to New Zealand. He made his Carnegie Hall recital début in 1993 (at Weill Recital Hall) to an enthusiastic reception from the audience and The New York Times, and has performed on the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center, Celebrity Series of Boston, LACMA and Maestro Series in Los Angeles, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, St. Petersburg Grand and Chamber Philharmonic Halls, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and the Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo, among many other venues and series. Schepkin’s discography includes major works by Bach (the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, the Partitas, Italian Concerto, French Overture, Four Duets, and two recordings of the Goldberg Variations), Schumann, Brahms (complete late piano works), Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Schnittke. Schepkin is a recipient of numerous prizes and awards; his concerts and recordings have garnered critical acclaim from such publications as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Boston Phoenix, the Boston Musical Intelligencer, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, BBC Music Magazine, International Piano, Gramophone, Fanfare, and Musicweb-International. Schepkin’s repertoire extends from late Renaissance to the present day and includes several hundred piano and chamber works.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Schepkin studied piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Alexandra Zhukovsky, Grigory Sokolov, and Alexander Ikharev, and graduated with highest honors in 1985. He was the assistant to Prof. Ekaterina Murina at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1987-89. He made his orchestral début with the St. Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra in 1984. After his move to the US in 1990, he studied with Russell Sherman at New England Conservatory, where he earned an Artist Diploma in 1992 and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1999. He has been a member of the piano faculty at the NEC School of Preparatory and Continuing Education since 1993, and has served as Associate Professor of Piano at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh since 2003. He taught piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1988-90 and coached chamber music at the Boston Conservatory in 2006-07. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Iowa in 1997-98, and a Visiting Associate Professor of Music at Boston University in 2011-13. He was also a member of the Music History and Musicology faculty at NEC in 1995-2006. Schepkin has presented lecture-recitals and master classes at NEC, UCLA, Oberlin, the San Francisco Conservatory, MIT, Longy, Duquesne, the Norwegian Academy of Music, and other institutions of higher learning.
Sergey Schepkin is a Steinway Artist.
Recordings on Ongaku, Bridge, Centaur, Simax.
Artist Diploma, D.M.A., NEC.
photo by Carolyn Hine