Southeastern Piano Festival June 7 - 13

From Our Friends at the USC School of Music …

For one week each June, the Southeastern Piano Festival (SEPF) and the Arthur Fraser Piano Competition transform the University of South Carolina School of Music — and the city of Columbia — into a vibrant cultural destination, drawing audiences and rising piano talent from across the country.

This year’s Festival runs from Sunday, June 7 through Saturday, June 13, featuring an exceptional lineup of internationally acclaimed pianists, including Soyeon Kate Lee, Blair McMillen, Pedja Muzijevic and Nicholas Susi. Concerts are at the University of South Carolina School of Music and the Koger Center for the Arts.

Presented by the USC School of Music, the Southeastern Piano Festival combines inspiring performances, educational programming and the prestigious Arthur Fraser Piano Competition, which showcases some of the nation’s most promising young pianists.

Festival Concert Schedule

Sunday, June 7, 4 p.m.

Celebration Concert

The Festival opens with a crowd-favorite celebration featuring the USC School of Music and SEPF piano faculty. Pianists Phillip Bush, Annie Jeng, Scott Price and Nicholas Susi will perform an engaging program of solo works ranging from Mozart to Frank Zappa.

Monday, June 8, 7:30 p.m.

Artist Spotlight: Nicholas Susi

Described by The WholeNote as “an innovative musician and aggressive thinker with a gift for keyboard brilliance,” Susi returns to the Festival stage with a solo recital centered on two of his artistic passions: French Impressionism and the music of Franz Liszt.

Tuesday, June 9, 7:30 p.m.

Artist Spotlight: Pedja Muzijevic

Pianist and curator Pedja Mužijević is internationally recognized for imaginative programming that bridges old and new music. His Festival performance pays tribute to the 1970s — the era of the cassette tape — while celebrating the creativity and eclecticism of the mixtape tradition.

Wednesday, June 10, 7:30 p.m.

Artist Spotlight: Blair McMillen

Praised by The New York Times as “prodigiously accomplished and exciting” and among piano’s “brilliant stars,” Blair McMillen brings his genre-defying artistry to Columbia with a program featuring works by Claude Debussy, Brian Wilson, Margaret Bonds, William Bolcom and more.

Thursday, June 11, 7:30 p.m.

Artist Spotlight: Soyeon Kate Lee

Acclaimed pianist Soyeon Kate Lee will perform works by Debussy, Schumann, Prestini, Scriabin and Prokofiev. Praised by The New York Times for her “huge, richly varied sound, lively imagination and firm sense of style,” Lee arrives directly from this year’s Spoleto Festival

USA Bank

of America Chamber Music Series.

Saturday, June 13, 7:30 p.m.

Arthur Fraser Piano Competition Winners Recital

The Festival concludes with an evening of dazzling performances by the winners of the Arthur Fraser Piano Competition. Adjudicated by a distinguished panel of judges, the competition features elite young pianists from across the nation competing for cash prizes and the opportunity to perform with the South Carolina Philharmonic.

Tickets are available for its signature concerts through Koger Center for the Arts. SEPF also includes two free lunchtime concerts and educational lectures throughout the week.

For tickets, schedules and additional information, visit SoutheasternPianoFestival.com.

The Concert Truck Returns to Columbia for South Eastern Piano Festival

“Something changed for me in that moment,” Luby says, “and I started to question why concerts always happen in concert halls. Spaces started to look different to me … everywhere I went seemed like a great place to have a concert.”

The Southeastern Piano Festival’s “Piano X” initiative aims to find alternative and nontraditional ways of connecting people to piano music. This year’s headline features a show on the go.   

The aptly named Concert Truck will be returning to its Columbia roots on Monday, June 14th to perform at Boyd Plaza at 8pm. The box truck is a mobile music venue, fully furnished with lights, a sound system and, of course, a piano.  

The South Eastern Piano Festival (SEPF) is an annual event that is both education and performance based, featuring shows from some of the world’s best pianists and serving to train some of the nation’s top youth pianists. This year, the festival takes place from June 12 - 20 at the University of South Carolina’s concert halls.  

The Concert Truck, however, takes the music hall experience outdoors. 

According to Marina Lomazov, SEPF founder and artistic director, the truck erases the “invisible formality” of traditional piano performances, leaving more space for interaction between the audience and performers.  

Lomazov noted that not everyone can afford tickets to concerts or is comfortable in a formal music hall environment. The truck brings the experience to people so that they can embrace the music for themselves or at least have enough exposure to appreciate it. “The people who play on the truck … passionately love the music and they want to share that love with as many people as they can,” Lomazov says.  

The people who will be performing on the truck next week are its founders: Susan Zhang and Nick Luby.  Zhang herself is an alum of the Southeastern Piano Festival and attended as a participant when she was a teenager. Both Zhang and Luby studied piano at UofSC and were students of Lomazov and her husband Joseph Rackers.  

Luby first had the idea for the truck while traveling. He had the habit of practicing piano in churches while on the road, and one day found that his playing had drawn a small crowd from the street. “Something changed for me in that moment,” Luby says, “and I started to question why concerts always happen in concert halls. Spaces started to look different to me … everywhere I went seemed like a great place to have a concert.”  

Luby started researching mobile concert halls only to realize that they didn’t exist. That’s when he approached Zhang with the notion of the Concert Truck.  

The truck debuted its first show on a bright summer morning around five years ago for an audience of nearly 200 people — many of whom had never experienced classical piano before.  

The Concert Truck really took off when the pandemic hit.  

“Suddenly you could not be inside a concert hall. And that’s when their idea really exploded” Lomazov says. The duo began collaborating with major companies such as the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera, and the Dallas Symphony, to name a few. They hardly had a break in the past year, sometimes performing up to three concerts a day.  

Recently, Zhang and Luby signed on with artist management company Opus 3 which is, according to Lomazov, “as high as you can go in the world of classical music, of music in general … it’s a real success story.” 

As the Concert Truck continues to tour, Zhang and Luby want to challenge what is expected from a classical piano concert. “Working with organizations during this time is really exciting because we can work with them to push on those boundaries as well,” Zhang says.  In the future, the two want to focus on local collaborations and connecting more deeply with the communities they serve.

-Stephanie Allen