With Maria Parrini and the Clemson University Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Levin.
Maria Parrini, 16, is the daughter of Sherry and Fabio Parrini from Greenville, SC. She is a senior at Wade Hampton High School and the Greenville Fine Arts Center, and has studied piano since the age of three with both parents. She has also studied cello with Martha Brons and Christopher Hutton, and she participates in the Fine Arts Center’s chamber music program as both a pianist and a cellist, under the tutelage of John Ravnan. Maria made her orchestral debut at age thirteen on the cello, performing David Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody with the Clemson University Symphony Orchestra. This performance was quickly followed by her piano concerto debut with the Carolina Youth Symphony’s Symphony Orchestra, playing the first movement of Schumann’s Piano Concerto. She was awarded a solo concerto performance with the Greenville County Youth Orchestras’ Young Artist Orchestra in May 2012, with which she performed the entire Schumann Piano Concerto at the Gunter Theatre in Greenville, SC. In the summer of 2012 she performed the first movement of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto with the Brevard Music Center Orchestra conducted by David Stewart Wiley, as a winner of the Jan and Beattie Wood Concerto Competition. Most recently, Maria has been scheduled to perform the first movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the GAMAC Orchestra at Anderson University in March 2014 as the winner of the Bernhardt House of Violins Concerto Competition, and has won the Southern Division of the MTNA Senior Piano Performance Competition held at the University of Louisville. Throughout her high school career, she has won awards in various local and regional solo competitions, including the SC MTNA Junior and Senior Piano Competitions, the GMTA Lawrence Hamilton Morton Scholarship Auditions, the Limestone College Young Artist Competition, the GCYO Solo Competition, the Carolina Youth Symphony Concerto Competition, and the GAMAC Concerto Competition. She has attended the Brevard Music Center, Southeastern Piano Festival, and the Philadelphia International Music Festival; through these institutions she has studied with Norman Krieger, Marina Lomazov and Charles Fugo, and Hugh Sung, respectively. At SEPF, Maria was chosen by Sergei Babayan to perform for him in a masterclass. She has also performed in masterclasses for Russell Sherman, Natalya Antonova, Christopher O’Riley, and Svetlana Smolina. Maria is passionate about spreading music in her community; she organized a benefit concert for the SC Upstate Homeless Coalition in November, and regularly teaches strings to students at the Frazee Dream Center in downtown Greenville, SC.
TBA