Judges for 2008 Competition

Judges (in alphabetical order)

Douglas Humpherys
Douglas Humpherys was the Gold Medalist at the inaugural Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition. Since then, his performance career has taken him throughout Asia, Europe, and North America, including recent concerts in Beijing, Chonqing, Guanzhou, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, Wuhan, Berlin, Dublin, Hamburg, Novgorod, Prague, Venice, Montenegro, Serbia, Canada, and across the United States. He has taught hundreds of master classes at universities, music academies, and festivals throughout the world. In addition, he has presented lectures to the European Piano Teachers’ Association, the Music Teachers’ National Association, the World Conference on Piano Pedagogy, and the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy.

A frequent adjudicator, he has served on the jury of the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition eleven times, and has also adjudicated the Rachmaninoff International Young Artists’ Piano Competition, the Chinese 2005 National Competition in Beijing, the PTNA National Piano Competition in Tokyo, the Hilton Head International Piano Competition, and the Bösendorfer International Piano Competition. His experience in this regard led him to create and direct the Eastman Young Artists' International Piano Competition, which is held biennially in Rochester, New York.

Mr. Humpherys completed graduate degrees at the Juilliard School (MM) and the Eastman School of Music (DMA), where he is currently professor of piano, and co-chair of the piano department. His major teachers have included Nelita True, Martin Canin and Robert Smith. In recent years, he completed appointments as Visiting Professor of Piano at the University of Michigan and at Yonsei University in Korea. He has traveled to the Czech Republic three times as a faculty member of the South Bohemia Summer Music Festival. During the summer of 2007, he will be teaching at the Chinese-American International Piano Institute, associated with the Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Cheng-Du, China, and at the Rassegna di Musica da Camera in Bologna and Madigliana, Italy. He has recorded a wide variety of repertoire on compact disc, and has been featured in live broadcasts of performances on affiliates of PBS Television and National Public Radio.

Robin McCabe
Celebrated American pianist Robin McCabe has enthralled audiences on four continents with her virtuosic performances, and has established herself as one of America’s most communicative and persuasive artists. McCabe’s involvement and musical sensibilities have delighted audiences across the United States, Europe, Canada, South America, and the Far East.

Critics respond both to McCabe’s prowess and to her expressive intensity. As noted by the New York Times, "What Ms. McCabe has that raises her playing to such a special level is a strong lyric instinct and confidence in its ability to reach and touch the listener.” She has won numerous prizes and awards, and her recordings have received universal acclaim. Her debut album featured the Agosti transcription of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, a premiere recording of that piece. Critics praised it as "mightily impressive." Stereo Review described her disc of Bartok as “all that we have come to expect from this artist, a first-rate performance!"

McCabe, a Puyallup native, earned her bachelor of music degree summa cum laude at the University of Washington School of Music, where she studied with Béla Siki, and her master’s and doctorate degrees at the Juilliard School of Music, where she studied with Rudolf Firkusny. She joined the Juilliard faculty in 1978, then returned to the UW in 1987 to accept a position on the piano faculty. In 1994 McCabe was appointed Director of the School of Music. She continues to teach as Professor of Piano and head of the school's keyboard division, and is one of two Ruth Sutton Waters Professors of Music for 2002-05. In addition, McCabe is a persuasive arts ambassador and advocate for arts audience development.

She was honored in 1993 at Seattle’s Association for Women in Communications annual Matrix Table dinner, at which outstanding women of achievement in business, the arts, and community service are recognized. In 1995 McCabe presented the annual faculty lecture — a concert with commentary — at the University of Washington. She was the first professor of music in the history of the University to be awarded this lectureship. The November 1997 issue of Seattle magazine selected McCabe as one of 17 current and past University of Washington professors who have had an impact on life in the Pacific Northwest.

Robert Roux
Pianist Robert Roux began his career at age 10 with a performance on the nationally televised Lawrence Welk Show. Since that time, he has been a winner of several piano competitions in the United States, including the United States Information Agency's Artistic Ambassador Competition and the International Piano Recording Competition. A Steinway Artist, Roux's performances include appearances at the White House, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Library of Congress in Washington, DC., Merkin Concert Hall in New York, Stude Concert Hall in Houston on the Horowitz Steinway, St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music, and Villa Pignatelli in Naples. He has toured as recitalist and concerto soloist in sixteen countries; Nuremberg Nachrichten, Germany's third largest daily newspaper, deemed him "...a smart interpreter of Viennese classicism whom we should bear in mind." Clavier magazine, referring to a three-day American Liszt Society festival held in 2002, deemed Roux's performance of the Liszt Sonata "...the most stunning playing during the festival...for which the audience offered a well-deserved standing ovation."

Dr. Roux's students have been frequent prizewinners and award recipients internationally. He has been chair of the keyboard department at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music since 1990. He has been Associate Director of the Prague International Piano Masterclasses since 1997, and has served on the faculty of the prestigious Van Cliburn Institute, the Moscow International Piano Masterclasses, the Paris International Piano Sessions, the Association of German Music Schools, the Amalfi Coast festival, and most recently the International Certificate Program for Piano Artists (Ecole Normale in Paris). His list of teachers and coaches includes Lili Kraus, Adele Marcus, James Bastien, William Race, and Leonard Shure. He is listed in Who's Who in America (2003) and is also interviewed as one of the top teachers in Benjamin Saver's publication, The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the USA.