The Academy Faculty 2024
Audrey Axinn
Audrey Axinn’s sensitive and compelling performances on fortepiano and modern piano have been hailed by the Washington Post and others as a “truly admirable” and “Axinn is an artist…her touch is magical and the fluidity of her playing exceptional.” “Her musical sensibility reminds one of Landowska.”
Performance highlights on historical and modern pianos include solo performances and collaborations with artists including Monica Huggett, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Eugene Fodor, Daniel Heifetz and Rufus Muller in venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Caramoor, and the Edinburgh International Festival.
Ms. Axinn teaches vocal and instrumental chamber music on fortepianos at The Juilliard School. She teaches collaborative piano and classroom courses at Mannes School of Music. Ms. Axinn has given master classes at prominent conservatories in China, the U.S., and Europe.
From 2018-21, Ms. Axinn served as Associate Dean and faculty at the Tianjin Juilliard School in China. Previously, she held the position of Assistant Dean at Mannes School of Music. Ms. Axinn holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School, as well as degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music, and The Manhattan School of Music. She also attended Sweelinck Conservatorium on a U.S. Fulbright and Netherland-America Foundation grant.
Maria Rose
Maria Rose-van Epenhuysen, originally from the Netherlands, combines her experience as a fortepiano performer with her research as a musicologist. She has performed extensively as solo performer and in chamber music, and has a PhD in Musicology from New York University. Ms. Rose has performed chamber music with the Festetics String Quartet from Budapest, the Gamerith Trio in Austria, and with the Romanian violinist Vasile Beluska as the Mozart Fortepiano Duo. She has written many articles and lectured on piano performance practice. Her path-breaking research on early French piano music has led the way for a new generation of fortepianists focusing on previously unfamiliar repertoire.
Ms. Rose received her piano performance training in the Netherlands, London, and the U.S. She has recorded a wide range of repertoire on period instruments; including the complete Mozart Sonatas and Haydn Trios on an original Anton Walter piano in Austria. She received the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society for her recording projects and a grant from the Netherland America Foundation. She is a Board member of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America and a Senior editor at RILM, the bibliographic database for music research, in New York City. Ms. Rose lives in the Catskill region, where she founded the Academy of Fortepiano Performance in Hunter, and hosts the International Fortepiano Salon with Yiheng Yang.
2010 - present
Andrew Willis
For several decades Andrew Willis has explored the historical development of keyboard instruments and their performance practice through the study, performance, and teaching of the widest possible repertoire. He participates frequently in conferences, festivals, and concert series and has held leadership roles for the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society and the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, serving as a finals juror of the Westfield International Fortepiano Competition. Willis teaches performance and related subjects on instruments ranging from harpsichord to modern piano as a Professor in the School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where for over a decade he directed the biennial Focus on Piano Literature symposia. Willis holds degrees from Cornell University, Temple University, and The Curtis Institute of Music, where his mentors included Malcolm Bilson, Lambert Orkis, and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. He has recorded solo and ensemble music of three centuries on historically relevant pianos for the Albany, Bridge, Claves, Centaur, and CRI labels, collaborating with Malcolm Bilson and others in the first complete Beethoven sonata cycle recorded on historical pianos
2010 - present
Elizaveta Miller
Guest artist Elizaveta Miller is a true and inspired multi-instrumentalist, who plays harpsichord, fortepiano and piano; as well as clavichord and organ. Her repertoire covers five centuries of music, from late Renaissance to contemporary music. In 2013, she was awarded First prize at the Bruges Musica Antiqua Competition. She has performed throughout Europe and Russia, taking part in the Bruges MA Festival, Beethovenfest Bonn, Bozar Music, Dubrovnik Music Festival and The Homecoming Music Festival. As a continuo player, she has collaborated with numerous conductors, including Václav Luks, Reinhard Goebel, Maxim Emelyanychev, Robert Hollingsworth, Christian Curnyn, and others. Elizaveta studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and at Yale School of Music. She held a teaching position at the Moscow State Conservatory in the Historical Instruments Department for nine years but resigned and left the country in March 2022 after the beginning of the full-scale Russian aggression on Ukraine. In May 2022 she was invited to teach at McGill University in Montreal, where she is presently holding a position of Assistant Professor of harpsichord.
Masayuki Maki
Masayuki Maki specializes in historical keyboard instruments as a performer, teacher, and technician. As Adjunct Assistant Professor at Queens College, he teaches the organ, harpsichord, fortepiano, chamber music, Baroque Performance Practice seminar, and leads the Baroque Ensemble. Formally he was the curator of the historical keyboard collection at the Juilliard School. Between 2010 and 2018, he served as the Associate Director of the "Rethinking Bach" summer workshop at Queens College and Tokai University in Japan. He has been on faculty with The Academy of Fortepiano Performance at the Catskill Mountain Foundation since the inaugural year of 2017. Mr. Maki's creative and insightful lecture demonstration of “Applying Violin Bowing Expression on the Clavichord” was a highlight of AFP 2018. He has played with New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, New York Classical Players and various chamber ensembles and soloists. Besides the activities in the US, he teaches and directs ensembles in Colombia and Ecuador. He has studied from the Early Music Institute at Indiana University, Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, and Smarano Organ Academy in Italy, and he received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University. He studied the historical keyboard (harpsichord, fortepiano, clavichord and organ) technology and building from Robert Duffy (IN), Klop Orgel- en Clavecimbelbouw (NL), Onno Peper (NL), Yasushi Takahashi (JP), and Richard Hester (NY).
Jiayan Sun
Praised by the New York Times for his “revelatory” performances, and by the Toronto Star for his “technically flawless, poetically inspired and immensely assured playing,” pianist Jiayan Sun has performed with many orchestras, including the Cleveland Orchestra and the Hallé Orchestra, and he has conducted from the keyboard the Meiningen Court Orchestra. He has performed at and participated in the Verbier Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Aspen Music Festival, the Sarasota Music Festival, and PianoTexas. Under the mentorship of Sir András Schiff, he was invited to give a number of solo recitals in Europe as part of Schiff’s “Building Bridges” project.
Originally from Yantai, China, Sun has been awarded prizes at many of the major international piano competitions, including third prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition and second prize at the Dublin International Piano Competition. Playing early keyboard instruments and studying historical performance practice have played a significant role in Sun’s musical activities, with critically acclaimed appearances with the American Classical Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall. As the Iva Dee Hiatt Visiting Artist in piano at Smith College, he presented Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas in chronological order, in addition to yearlong series devoted to the music of Schubert and Chopin.
Cynthia Roberts is one of America's leading baroque violinists and has appeared as soloist, leader, and recitalist throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. She is returning to AFP as teacher and chamber music coach following her participation in the Hunter workshop in 2018. She has served as concertmaster of the New York Collegium, Apollo's Fire, Concert Royal, and Les Arts Florissants. She performs regularly with the Boston Early Music Festival, Tafelmusik, and American Bach Soloists. She has appeared with the London Classical Players, Taverner Players, Clarion Music Society, and Smithsonian Chamber Players. Her playing was featured on the soundtrack of the film Casanova and she has performed live on the "Late Show with David Letterman." She recently appeared as guest soloist and concertmaster with the New World Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. Ms. Roberts teaches at the Juilliard School and the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. She has given master classes at Eastman, Cleveland Institute, Cornell, Rutgers, Minsk Conservatory in Belarus, and Jeune Orchestre Atlantique in Santes, France. Her recording credits include Sony, Analekta, BMG/Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, and Eclectra