Members
Donna K. Baldwin is a frequent solo recitalist who also performs regularly with the Friday Morning Music Club and the Washington Piano Society. She was a finalist and prize winner in the 2006 Washington International Piano Artists Competition, where her awards included Best Baroque Performance for her interpretation of Scarlatti. Donna studied piano performance at the Bachelor's and Master's levels. She currently studies with Leander Bien, and her previous teachers and coaches have included Brian Ganz and University of Kansas Artists-in-Residence Menahem Pressler and Claude Frank. When not at the piano, she earns a living as a research analyst for the Internal Revenue Service.
Roger Coleman began piano studies at age 19, earning a BA in Music and a BFA in Piano Performance from SUNY at Buffalo. Continuing at the University of Maryland at College Park, he received a Master's Degree in Music focusing on piano performance and pedagogy. Roger is currently Professor of Music at Montgomery College in Takoma Park. He also teaches piano and guitar in private practice. Roger has performed throughout the Washington area as a soloist and with rock, jazz, theater and choral ensembles. He is a member of the Swingtime Big Band, performing music of the Big Band era.
Alice Stark Garofano is the founder of the Piano Society of Greater Washington. She began piano studies at age five with Marie Koranievsky, a teacher at Juilliard in New York. Her training in Washington has included working with teachers Gerda Klay and, currently, Leander Bien. She has performed in recitals held at Strathmore Hall and the Levine School of Music. She maintains a piano studio teaching youth in Rockville, Maryland.
Gala Gurinovich was born in Omsk/Siberia and began playing piano at age six. After the collapse of the Soviet Union she emigrated to Israel, earning a master’s degree in piano from Tel Aviv University, where she studied with Alexander Volkov. Concerts in Israel and Europe followed, as well as master classes in Israel with Pnina Salzman, and in Zurich, Switzerland with Esther Yellin of the Heinrich Neuhaus Foundation. Gala is the 3rd Place Winner of the 2007 Washington International Piano Arts Competition, where she also won the Audience award. Gala and her husband live in the Washington area with their three daughters.
Monika Mockovcakova received her Master of Music degree and is currently pursuing her Doctor’s degree from the University of Musical Arts of Bratislava, Slovak Republic. She studied piano with Ida Cernecka, the former student of Vera Gornostayeva. She has performed in international performance courses under the direction of famous teachers and concert pianists. Her concert tours have taken her to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Belgium, and the United States. Monika frequently participates in chamber music and collaborates with singers and instrumentalists. She has recorded for Slovak Radio, Czech Radio, and Slovak TV. Monika is the 2nd Place Winner of the 2007 Washington International Piano Arts Competition, where she also won the Press Award and the award for best classical performance.
Sandra Segal began her piano studies at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago at age four. After earning mathematics and statistics degrees at the University of Chicago, she resumed piano studies at the Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University in Chicago with Saul Dorfman; at Montgomery College with Richard Werder; and at the University of Maryland with Santiago Rodriguez and Roy Johnson, earning a BA with honors in piano performance. She obtained her Master’s degree in piano performance at Catholic University where she studied with Thomas Mastroianni and Luiz de Moura Castro. She now studies privately with Leander Bien, composes and arranges music, and teaches piano and theory in her private studio in Rockville.
Ellen Tenenbaum studies piano with Carolyn Lamb Booth of Gaithersburg, Maryland, who is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory. Ellen performs in library, hospital, church, embassy, and senior living settings across the Washington area, in a volunteer capacity and for charitable events and causes. Her recital engagements involve discussing the music and composers followed by playing their works. She combines music with family and work as a study director at the evaluation research firm Westat.
Robert C. Snyder, M.D. is currently Chairman of Pathology at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. An avid chamber musician, Bob has performed numerous recitals with Marilyn Cotlow, Metropolitan Opera Soprano; Davyd Booth, violinist and John Eitzen, cellist (members of the Philadelphia Orchestra); and various chamber musicians at local embassies as former Music Director of the James Monroe Society. He has a greater than 30 year four-hand piano collaboration with Galen Deibler, retired professor of piano at Susquehanna University. Having coached chamber music extensively with International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition Silver Medalist Susan Starr, he is presently studying privately with her in Philadelphia. Dr. Snyder is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Music Conservatory of Shenandoah University.
Viscount Thurston began his piano studies at age 7. At his first public performance at age 17, he played Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in the Denver Auditorium, collaborating with his teacher, Antonia Brico, who conducted the Brico Symphony. As a graduate student at the Ohio State University, Viscount won the music school's concerto competition and performed Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the OSU orchestra. He completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance in 1984. In 2006 and 2007 he was, respectively, 3rd Place Winner and Semifinalist in the Washington International Piano Artists Competition, and he recently became a performing member of the Friday Morning Music Club. He works for the Federal Aviation Administration at its headquarters in Washington, DC.
Felicia Weiss began studying piano at age nine, and in high school formed a chamber ensemble that went on to win the Long Island, New York Teen Talent competition. Currently, she studies piano with Myriam Avalos, is a performing member of the Friday Morning Music Club, attends the AlpenKammerMusik summer festival in Austria, and actively participates in the Levine School of Music’s chamber music program.