Lydia Artymiw, piano
Cynthia Raim, piano

The recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Prize, Philadelphia-born Lydia Artymiw has performed with over one hundred orchestras world-wide including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit Symphony, LA Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Solo recital tours have taken her to all major American cities and to important European music centers, and throughout the Far East. She has performed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Ukraine, Estonia, Finland, and Poland, as well as in China, Singapore, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea.

Critics have acclaimed her seven solo recordings for the Chandos label, and she has also recorded for Bridge, Centaur, and Naxos. Her debut Chandos “Variations” CD won Gramophone Magazine’s “Best of the Year” award, and her Tchaikovsky Seasons CD sold over 25,000 copies.

In 2018 her CD of “The Complete Cello-Piano Works of Felix Mendelssohn” with cellist Marcy Rosen for the Bridge label was nominated for a Grammy award. Her festival appearances include Aspen, Badenweiler (Germany), Bantry (Ireland), Bay Chamber, Bravo! Vail Valley, Caramoor, Chamber Music Northwest, SaltBay, Chautauqua, Grand Canyon, Hollywood Bowl, Marlboro, Montréal, Mostly Mozart, Seattle, and Tucson.

An acclaimed chamber musician, Artymiw has collaborated with such celebrated artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Richard Stoltzman, Marcy Rosen, Arnold Steinhardt, Michael Tree, Kim Kashkashian, John Aler, Benita Valente, and the Guarneri, Tokyo, American, Alexander, Borromeo, Daedalus, Miami, Orion, and Shanghai Quartets, and has toured nationally with Music from Marlboro groups. A recipient of top prizes in the 1976 Leventritt and the 1978 Leeds International Competitions, she graduated from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts and studied with distinguished concert pianist and former Director of the Curtis Institute of Music, Gary Graffman, for twelve years.

Artymiw served on the juries for the 2022 Charles Wadsworth Piano Competition in GA, the 2019 First China International Music Competition in Beijing, the 2017 Lang Lang Shenzhen/Futian International Piano Competition, and the 2015 Van Cliburn Junior International Piano Competition and Festival. Since 2015 Artymiw has been a frequent guest piano teacher at Juilliard where she has also served on seventeen piano concerto competition juries. Artymiw also presented piano master classes at Juilliard in New York, Curtis in Philadelphia (2016), the Manhattan School, Tanglewood (2021), and Chautauqua (2022). From 1989-2020 Artymiw was Distinguished McKnight Professor of Piano at the University of Minnesota and now holds an Emerita title. For more information, please visit her website at lydiaartymiw.com

Cynthia Raim came to international attention when she was unanimously chosen as the First Prize Winner of the 1979 Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Switzerland, after winning First Prizes in the 1977 Three Rivers National Piano Competition in Pittsburgh and the J. S. Bach International Piano Competition in Washington DC. She has been acclaimed for her concerto, recital, and chamber music performances throughout the United States and abroad and also won the 1987 Pro Musicis Award, the Festorazzi Award at the Curtis Institute and the "Distinguished Artist Award" from The Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia.

Cynthia Raim has appeared in recitals with soprano Benita Valente, cellist David Soyer, violinist Arnold Steinhardt, violist Samuel Rhodes, and the Guarneri String Quartet and has recorded for Gall, Pantheon, and Connoisseur Society, including solo albums of Ravel, Schumann, Brahms, and Schubert and two-piano recordings of Rachmaninoff, Brahms, and Dvořák with David Allen Wehr.

A native of Detroit, where she studied with Mischa Kottler, Ms. Raim studied with Rudolf Serkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she earned bachelors and masters degrees.