The 2023 Young Artists Piano Competition

First prize winner of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, American pianist Rachel Naomi Kudo is captivating audiences around the globe with her "heartfelt, courageous and perfect playing" (Lübecker Nachrichten) and as a "thrilling" artist with "the highest artistic claim who demonstrates a perfection of technique and precision down to the smallest motivic detail" (Die Rheinpfalz).

First prize winner of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, American pianist Rachel Naomi Kudo is captivating audiences around the globe with her "heartfelt, courageous and perfect playing" (Lübecker Nachrichten) and as a "thrilling" artist with "the highest artistic claim who demonstrates a perfection of technique and precision down to the smallest motivic detail" (Die Rheinpfalz).

Following her orchestral debut with the Chicago and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestras, Rachel has performed as both soloist and chamber musician at the Bachfest in Leipzig, Royal Castle in Warsaw, Salle Cortot in Paris, Musikverein in Vienna, Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel, International Chopin Festival in Duszniki-Zdrój, Poland, Tivoli International Festival in Denmark, Bergen International Festival in Norway, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and Alice Tully Hall, David Geffen Hall, and Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in New York.

She is a recipient of the Gilmore Young Artist Award, a Davidson Fellow Laureate of the Davidson Institute of Talent Development, and the Salon de Virtuosi Grant. Additionally, she earned scholarships from the National YoungArts Foundation and Rohm Music Foundation, and has won numerous top prizes at the U.S. National Chopin Competition in Miami, and a finalist diploma at the 15th International Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

Born in Washington, D.C., to Japanese-Korean parents, Rachel began her studies with Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago. After spending her childhood in Japan, she returned to Chicago to pursue a musical life, playing chamber music and violin in her high school orchestra, appearing on From the Top on NPR, also studying with Kum-Sing Lee in Vancouver, Canada.

Rachel received the Arthur Rubinstein Prize, Chopin Prize, Sanders/Tel Aviv Art Museum Prize, and Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship under the tutelage of Yoheved Kaplinsky and Joseph Kalichstein at The Juilliard School. She continued to work with Richard Goode at Mannes College of Music, Gilbert Kalish at Stony Brook University, and Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.

She received guidance in master classes of Robert Levin, and from Emanuel Ax and Sir András Schiff at Carnegie Hall's Professional Training Workshops. Aspen Music Festival and School, Juilliard ChamberFest, International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove, Music@Menlo, Perlman Music Program's Chamber Music Workshop, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's "Chamber Music Encounters" enriched and expanded her musical horizons.

Rachel believes in sharing the transformative power of music with the widest possible audience to foster cultural engagement and human connection. As an educator, she is passionate about mentoring the next generation of young musicians and has taught master classes worldwide. She was recently engaged as a live stream host for Eighteenth International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and the U.S. National Chopin and Cliburn Junior International Piano Competitions. In February 2021, in a Virtual Special Event for The Gilmore, Rachel presented the world premiere of Marc-André Hamelin’s Suite à l'ancienne, which she commissioned with her funding from the Gilmore Piano Festival.

Pianist Joseph Kingma enjoys an active and prolific career as a soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. In his New York solo debut at the Yamaha Artist Salon, the New York Concert Review wrote that he: “coaxed the listener into the music’s poetry from the very first notes…though his technique emerged through the program as one which is capable of anything, it was always used in the service of the music itself.”  An award winner in many competitions, he won First Prize and Best Interpretation of a Work by Franz Liszt (Sonata in B minor) in the American Liszt Society’s 2017 Franz Liszt International Piano Festival and Competition. As a recitalist, he has performed on the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series in Chicago, the Yamaha Artist Services Performance Series in New York City, the Dorothy MacKenzie Price Piano Series in Toledo, the Music Institute of Chicago, the Timucua Arts Foundation in Orlando, the Good Shepherd International Concert Series in Minneapolis, L’Oasis Musicale in Montreal, and many others. Several of his performances have been featured on Chicago’s classical music radio station, 98.7 WFMT. A frequent concerto soloist, he has been engaged with the Rapides Symphony, Monroe Symphony, Manassas Symphony, Gulf Coast Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Sarasota, Palm Beach Atlantic Symphony, Spring Hill Orchestra, and Brazos Chamber Orchestra. He has earned repeat performances with the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival and the Sonus International Music Festival, including an invitation to adjudicate the latter’s Carlos Guastavino International Composition Competition.

Joseph, an MTNA Nationally Certified Teacher of Music, is the Coordinator of the Keyboard Division and Assistant Professor of Piano at Palm Beach Atlantic University, where he teaches piano and related courses. His college and private studio students have won awards in competitions and been accepted into prestigious graduate school performance programs. He regularly receives performance and masterclass invitations from arts schools, universities, and music teacher associations across the country.

Joseph graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with his DMA, where he studied with Anton Nel. He earned his BM and MM at Rice University under the tutelage of Robert Roux. He studied chamber music with Jon Kimura Parker, Brian Connelly, Cho-Liang Lin, James Dunham, Jeane Kierman Fischer, Desmond Hoebig, and Virginia Weckstrom, in addition to masterclasses with Norman Krieger, Tali Morgulis, Sandra Wright Shen, Alan Chow, and Craig Nies. His earlier teachers include Aviram Reichert, Philip Pletcher, and Elena Arseniev. Joseph’s website is www.josephkingma.com.

Hailed as “an impressive performer in his own right...impassioned, hypnotic, insightful...superb tonal control” by the New York Concert Review, and as a “prodigy…Rojas, the piano and the music become one” by the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Erikson Rojas has given numerous solo and chamber performances in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, including eight appearances at Carnegie Hall. In each case he has also been featured as soloist with orchestra. His recordings have obtained critical acclaim, and as a teacher, lecturer, and church musician, he continues to gain distinction amidst high demand.

Dr. Rojas is honored to have been one of five Americans and the only Hispanic in 30 pianists selected world-wide to participate at the Cleveland International Piano Competition. He has won the Ambler Symphony Orchestra Competition, the Outstanding Young Christian Artists Competition, and Cuba’s Amadeo Roldán and UNEAC Competitions, among others. A pupil of the legendary Leon Fleisher (5 years), Dr. Rojas is a graduate of Peabody Institute (M.M., G.P.D.), where he also studied conducting privately with the eminent conductor Gustav Meier. Prior to Peabody he studied piano with Madame Eleanor Sokoloff at Curtis Institute of Music, and with Distinguished Professor Samuel Hsu at Cairn University (B.M., B.S.), where he also learned organ under Robert Carwithen. Other lessons and masterclasses in piano were with Claude Frank, Gary Graffman, Seymour Lipkin, John Perry, Ilana Vered, Pavlina Dokovska, Susan Starr, Nelson Delle-Vigne Fabbri, and Jorge Luis Prats. As a scholarship student of Min Kwon and Juilliard’s Martin Canin, Dr. Rojas earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts. He is a member of the music honor society, Pi Kappa Lambda.

Performing frequently in the U.S. and abroad, Dr. Rojas is often invited as guest artist in music festivals and competitions. He teaches piano privately, with students having received top prizes and honors in local, national, and international piano festivals and competitions, including Dublin International Piano Festival and Summer Academy, Steinway’s 165th Anniversary Celebration, Pennsylvania’s “Young Classical Virtuosos of Tomorrow,” Csehy ChamberFest and Concerto Performance, Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Concerto Competition (Preparatory Division), and Eastern University Piano Festival and Competition, in which four of Rojas’s students won top-five prizes. Pupils he has taught and coached have also gone on to study at institutions such as The Juilliard School, Peabody Institute, Cleveland Institute, Shenandoah Conservatory, Temple University, Rutgers University, among others. He is on faculty at Palm Beach Atlantic University and Csehy Summer School of Music. He also serves as pianist of the Choral Society of the Palm Beaches and as music minister at Royal Palm Presbyterian Church in Southeast Florida, where he resides with his beloved wife Diandra.