SI-YO ARTIST™
Tara Hofmeister Sheng
Bio courtesy of Tara Hofmeister Sheng
http://www.tarahofmeister.com
Tara Hofmeister Sheng has performed in recital and as a chamber musician throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. She has played in such venues as Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Toronto Center for the Arts in Canada, Forbidden City Concert Hall in China, Euphrasius’ Basilica in Croatia, and Istana Budaya in Malaysia. Besides being featured on Tianjin Television in China as well as Wisconsin Public Radio in the United States, Ms. Hofmeister Sheng has participated in many concert series including Rachmaninoff Society, Amati Music Festival and Pianists for the New Millennium in New York, Amati Virtuoso Concert Series in New Jersey, Concerts by the Sea in California, Terra Magica Music Festival in Croatia, and International Piano Festival in Malaysia. She has collaborated with many distinguished artists including violinist, Siqing Lu.
Tara Hofmeister is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the International Music Institute of China™ (IMIC™). She developed the school’s curriculum and its teaching practices are based on her teaching methods. Before that, she was a member of the piano faculty at the Middle School Attached to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing (中央音乐学院附中) where she taught scholarship students. She is the first foreign piano professor in the history of the school to be unanimously voted onto the faculty. She is also an honorary faculty member at Fuyuan Cultural Arts Center in China.
Being such a passionate educator, her students have consistently been awarded scholarships to pursue both undergraduate and graduate degrees at leading conservatories including Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College of Music in New York City, and won scholarships to participate in such music festivals as the Boston University Tanglewood Institute in Massachusetts and International Keyboard Institute and Festival in Manhattan. They have won numerous prizes such as The President’s Award at Manhattan School of Music in New York, Grand and First Prizes in such competitions as the Russian Music Competition, the Russell E. Lanning Competition, the International Concert Festival Competition, and as a result have performed at such venues as Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Bruno Walter Auditorium in New York City as well as toured France. Her graduated students are actively performing concertos with orchestras, recitals, and as chamber musicians throughout Asia, Europe, and United States.
Ms. Hofmeister Sheng has been regularly invited to teach master classes, give lecture/performances, and adjudicate auditions and competitions in Asia, Europe, and the United States. She has also served on the piano faculty at Amati Conservatory and the Preparatory Center for the Arts at Montclair State University in New Jersey, Amati Music Festival in New York, Terra Magica Music Festival in Croatia, and Opusfest International Piano Festival in the Philippines.
After a one-year engagement in 2000 as a regular columnist for Music Weekly, the foremost music newspaper in China, Ms. Hofmeister Sheng was invited to continue her column as a result of the enthusiastic response from Chinese readers. She wrote articles on music education in the United States, including interviews with world-renouned pedagoues Paul Sheftel and Solomon Mikowsky. Consequently, the newspaper awarded her Best Author of the Year in 2001. She was then invited to write for Piano Artistry, the leading piano magazine in China, where her interview with violinist Arnold Steinhardt was published, for Philharmonic, China’s primary music magazine, where her interview with Rosalyn Tureck was published, and for the Amati Libretto in the United States. Ms. Hofmeister Sheng currently writes regularly for The Allegretto™ , IMIC™’s monthly newsletter.