Piano Spheres Announces:
Our New Core Artist: Nic Gerpe
New Stein Resident Artist: Andres Jaramillo
and 30 for 30 Commissioning Project
Piano Spheres is thrilled to announce that pianist Nic Gerpe is our newest Core Artist, joining Vicki Ray, Aron Kallay and HOCKET as Core Artists, and Gloria Cheng and Mark Robson as Emeritus Artists for our 30th Anniversary season in 2024/25. “I’m deeply honored and ecstatic to join the Piano Spheres family. The artists of Piano Spheres have been a source of tremendous inspiration for many years, and the invitation to become a Core Artist is a thrill beyond words. I’m excited to begin this new musical journey!”
Many of us are familiar with Nic as a former PS Emerging Artist (2015) and through his own chamber music series Wicked Goat at Pasadena Conservatory of Music. Hailed as “magnetic” (Dan Johnson, L.A. Downtown News) and “prodigious… heroic” (Kevin McMahon, silverlakeblvd.com), L.A. Times music critic Mark Swed described his playing as “wonderfully illuminating… his tone is crystalline. His technique is dazzlingly fluid.” A dedicated proponent of new music, Nic has given numerous world and regional premieres of music by composers such as John Luther Adams, Frederic Rzewski, Anne LeBaron, and Gernot Wolfgang, among others. Nic has performed throughout Southern California and at festivals including the Beverly Hills International Music Festival, Banff International Keyboard Festival, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at the New England Conservatory, and the Tahoe Chamber Music Festival. Nic’s recent works include the Makrokosmos 50 Project, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of George Crumb’s seminal work Makrokosmos Volume I. Nic earned his DMA from USC, studying with Bernadene Blaha, Kevin Fitz-Gerald and Stewart Gordon.
Colombian-American pianist, conductor and educator Andrés Jaramillo will be Piano Spheres’ third Leonard Stein Resident Artist in 2024/25, following Althea Waites (2023-24) and William Chapman Nyaho (2022-23). Dr. Jaramillo will perform music of lesser known and historically underrepresented composers in concerts, workshops and masterclasses at schools, universities and concert halls throughout the Southland.
Andres currently serves as faculty at the Collinsworth School of Music at California Baptist University. Besides teaching, Dr. Jaramillo keeps an exciting and active career as a solo and collaborative pianist, clinician and conductor. He has performed internationally in South America, South Africa, Spain, and China as well as throughout the United States. His programs typically feature standard classical piano repertoire combined with Contemporary and Latin-American music, often premiering works by local and international composers. Dr. Jaramillo earned his DMA degree in Piano Performance from USC Thornton School of Music under the mentorship of prestigious pianist and teachers, Daniel Pollack, Dr. Alan Smith and Prof. Larry Livingston.
Piano Spheres also announces our new 30 for 30 Commissioning Project. This special project will commission 30 American composers to create 30 new works for the piano to celebrate their 30th anniversary season in 2024/25. All commissioned compositions will be premiered by Piano Spheres’ 2024/25 Core Artists: Nic Gerpe, HOCKET (Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff), Aron Kallay, and Vicki Ray, Emeritus Artist: Mark Robson, Guest Artist Stephen Drury, Emerging Artist Thomas Mellan, and Leonard Stein Resident Artist Andrés Jaramillo.
This announcement kicks off a dedicated GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to match $15,000 in pledges from our generous donors. Your donation will go toward paying composers and pianists respectful artist fees as well as production fees for our very special anniversary season