A native of New York, Paul Hersh has played both the piano and viola since he was six years old. He studied viola with William Primrose and piano with Leonard Shure and Edward Steuermann. From 1961 to 1971 he was violist and pianist with the Lenox Quartet, and he made his piano debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1964. Mr. Hersh has performed with many orchestras, including the Boston and San Francisco Symphonies and the New York Philharmonic, as well as in chamber groups and solo recitals. Hersh, who attended Yale University, is a former faculty member of Grinnell College and SUNY at Binghamton, and has been artist-in-residence and visiting faculty at numerous universities and festivals, including the University of California at Davis, Temple University, Oregon State University, University of Western Washington, Berkshire (now Tanglewood) Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival and the Spoleto (Italy) Festival.

As a decades-long member of the piano and viola faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he has inspired many generations of musicians through his unique humanist approach to music-teaching.

For the past several years Paul has been hosting a weekly piano class for his student/colleagues. They play music they’re working on, listen and discuss together, and explore the meaning of the music from a pianist’s point of view. Our workshops will invite you into this conversation and give all a chance to be part of this musical conversation.

The pianists:

Christopher Basso

Hye Yeong Min
Hye Yeong Min traded her science career in 1997 for the pursuit of her lifelong passion for music. She began piano lessons at age six and continued to study piano with Naomi Sparrow and chamber music with Bonnie Hampton at Stanford University where she majored in biology. After earning her Ph.D. as a molecular biologist at Harvard, Hye Yeong worked in biotech developing a novel approach to treating cancer. Deeply committed to music education, Hye Yeong has been active in organizing concerts and scholarship competitions for students through the Contra Costa Performing Arts Society, where she served as president, and founded a chamber music festival for high school students. She also chairs the Emerging Artists Fund of the Berkeley Piano Club, which aids young artists on the cusps of their professional careers. As a returning student in 2007, Hye Yeong completed her master’s degree in Chamber Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, studying piano with Paul Hersh, and has performed with Kim Kashkashian, Ian Swensen, and Bonnie Hampton. In 2012, she performed with Paul Hersh at the Olympic Music Festival in Washington state, Mendocino Music Festival, and the Moab Music Festival in Utah. She currently performs in the Bay Area as a solo pianist and chamber musician and enjoys teaching.

Laura has performed since the age of 15, touring Italy, Europe, USA and Canada both as a soloist and in Chamber Ensembles, to the enthusiasm of audiences and acclaim of critics.She has attended Master Classes in Salzburg, Brussels, Rome, and Perugia with many eminent pianists. She performed in the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds at the personal invitation of Gian Carlo Menotti and has been invited to perform repeatedly at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston (SC) as an Ambassador of her hometown. Also skilled as an organizer, she directed the Spoleto Piano Festival for 15 years. Her versatile talent keeps her busy in the fields of Opera, Musical Theatre and Vocal repertoire as well as in Music Education. She has taught Piano, Chamber Music and Vocal training for more than 25 years.

Monica Chew
Monica Chew (https://monicachew.com) is an Oakland pianist and composer. In 2017 she released her first solo album, Tender and Strange, featuring works by Bartók, Janáček, Messiaen, Takemitsu, and Scriabin. A “gifted player with an affinity for deeply sensitive expression” (Whole Note), she has been featured on radio stations worldwide. She started composing in 2017 and couldn’t be happier about it.  Prior to 2015, she worked nearly a decade as a principal software engineer on security and privacy at Mozilla and Google. She lives in Oakland with her husband, an 1899 Steinway B, a clavichord, and a disused violin.

Our moderator:

Catherine Angelo