Music without Borders International Piano Festival returns to the Gould Academy campus in Bethel for its ninth season, June 28 to July 25, 2015. Artistic Director Tamara Poddubnaya will welcome young pianists from the U.S. and Europe for this period of intensive piano study and frequent public performances.

Beginning Tuesday, June 30, they will present free public recitals at 7:30 p.m. every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, throughout the four-week festival. A special concert will begin at 7 p.m. on Saturday, the Fourth of July. Unless otherwise announced, all recitals will be held in air-conditioned Trustees Auditorium of the McLaughlin Science Center on the Gould campus. Reservations are not necessary, but seating is limited.

Artistic Director Tamara Poddubnaya and Festival Students

Tamara Poddubnaya, keyboard virtuoso and master teacher, is a native of Georgia in the Caucasus, and a distinguished graduate of the Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory in St. Petersburg. Much sought after as a juror at international piano competitions, she keeps a busy schedule, teaching and performing in Europe and the United States, where she is Professor and Head of the Piano Department at the Long Island Conservatory.

Festival students represent a truly international group. This season, they range in age from 10 to 27 and hail from Sweden, Russia, Turkey, the Netherlands, and the United States. Many of them will have careers as concert artists and teachers and all have studied piano since childhood. Several participants are Prof. Poddubnaya’s students, while others have met her at master classes and competitions in the U.S. and in Europe, or have been recommended to her by their own teachers. They enjoy the exceptional practice and performance facilities offered at Gould, an All-Steinway School, in a friendly community nestled in the mountains of western Maine, and they look forward to performing for an audience of admiring area residents and summer visitors.

A unique feature of Music without Borders is that all students have a daily lesson with Prof. Poddubnaya and a personal practice piano at which they spend many hours each day. They perform several times each week during the free public recitals, and advanced students present a solo program. At the end of their time in Bethel, students will perform from memory repertoire which they will have begun to study only after arriving on campus.

For a list of this season’s participants, facts about the Festival’s history and the venue, and the latest news, including occasional changes in recital locations and times, go to the website www.musicwoborders.com.

Gould Academy – An All-Steinway School

Gould is on the distinguished list of “All-Steinway Schools,” an honor shared by educational institutions such as Oberlin College Conservatory, Yale School of Music, The Juilliard School, Wheaton College, and Vassar College. This distinction denotes that Steinway and Steinway-designed pianos are exclusively used in the school’s performance and practice spaces.

Founded in 1836, Gould Academy is a coed college preparatory school located at the eastern edge of the White Mountains in Bethel. With a total of 245 boarding and day students and an average class size of ten, the Academy prepares academically motivated students for college and helps them to become independent-minded, ethical citizens who will lead lives of purpose, action, excellence, and compassion in a dynamic world. Visit the Gould website, www.gouldacademy.org, for more information.