2025 WIU Piano Festival

Date: Monday, April 07, 2025

Place: COFAC Recital Hall  

3:00-5:00PM, Masterclass
7:30PM, Guest Artist Recital

Guest Artist: Dr. Samuel Gingher, East Carolina University

Dr. Samuel Gingher serves as Assistant Professor of Piano Pedagogy and Class Piano at East Carolina University, with previous faculty appointments at Northern Arizona University, Millikin University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Bradley University. His research interests include classical piano improvisation pedagogy and the discovery and performance of rare masterworks. Dr. Gingher’s world-premiere recordings of piano trios by Carl Czerny (with Sun-Young Shin and Benjamin Hayek) and four-hand piano fantasies (with Pei-I Wang) can be heard on the Naxos label.

Dr. Gingher has been the winner of several competitions and recipient of many awards, including the Krannert Debut Artist Award, first prize in Brevard Music Festival’s International Solo Piano Competition, first prize in WVU’s Intersection between Jazz and Classical solo piano festival competition, the 21st Century Piano Commission Competition at UIUC, and concerto competition winner at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra Young Artist’s concerto competition in Georgia, to highlight a few. He has performed and taught in piano and chamber music festivals in North Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, California, Arizona, West Virginia, Austria and Switzerland, and has played in a variety of new music, chamber and jazz groups. Dr. Gingher was the keyboardist in Urbana-Champaign’s local jazz group, Almost “A” Quintet for many years. Dr. Gingher is an active member of MTNA and has served as a clinician and adjudicator for MTNA conferences in North Carolina, Illinois, Arizona and New Mexico.

Dr. Gingher has additional experience as a composer, arranger and free-lance audio engineer, having served as engineer or producer for albums on Naxos, Centaur, Albany and MSR Classics labels. Sam holds a DMA in Piano Performance and Literature, MM in Piano Pedagogy and MM in Piano Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and BM in Piano Performance from UNC-Chapel Hill. His former piano teachers include Timothy Ehlen, Thomas Otten, Edmund Paolantonio and Constance Kotis.