Four piano students in Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts will have an opportunity to perform in a master class with leading pianist Kirill Gerstein when he comes to campus March 19.

Gerstein will be in the area to perform with the Toledo Symphony March 20. At Bowling Green, he will give the master class from 2:30-4:30 p.m. that Friday in Bryan Recital Hall of the Moore Musical Arts Center.

In the world of music, his is an unusual story. He is the sixth winner of the Gilmore Artists Award—a $300,000 surprise grant given every four years to an artist to use to enhance their careers or their professional development. Equated to the MacArthur “genius” awards, the funds come with few strings attached.

The award is given to “a superb pianist and profound musician,” according to the Gilmore Foundation. It is administered by the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo, Mich. In fact, one of the places the award judges observed Gerstein’s playing was in a previous Toledo Symphony performance.

Born in Russia, Gerstein began playing piano while very young. He studied jazz at Boston’s Berklee School of Music as a teenager before taking up classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music.

Now he plays around the world but, somewhat unusually for a performer of his stature, also has a teaching position at the conservatory in Stuttgart, Germany.

BGSU piano students had another rewarding master class recently with award-winning Irish pianist Barry Douglas, who was in Bowling Green to perform in the University’s Festival Series.

“He was vey impressed with the preparation of the students,” said Susan Knapp, director of public events in the music college. “He said he was also impressed with the creative safety the students demonstrated. I think that’s a great testament to what our faculty are  building here.”

Pianist Margo Garrett returns to Bowling Green State University for a residency at the College of Musical Arts Feb. 1 and 2 as one of this year’s Helen McMaster Endowed Professors in Vocal and Choral Studies.

During her stay at the University, Garrett will coach student singers and pianists, as well as present a public master class at 7 p.m. Feb. 1 in Bryan Recital Hall that is free and open to the public.

Garrett has established a number of long-standing performing relationships with artists such as sopranos Kathleen Battle, Barbara Bonney, Dawn Upshaw and Benita Valente. Active in the world of contemporary music, Garrett has performed the premiers of more than 30 works.

She is a member of the Julliard School Collaborative Piano Faculty and was the first holder of the Ethel Alice Hitchcock Chair in Accompanying and Coaching at the University of Minnesota’s School of Music—the first privately endowed collaborative chair in the U.S.

Garrett is sharing this year’s McMaster professorship with renowned Swedish vocal conductor Erik Westberg, who completed his residency last October.

Helen McMaster and her late husband, Harold, established this endowed professorship in spring 2000. Helen McMaster, a longtime Perrysburg resident, has supported the arts at BGSU for many years. The McMasters previously donated to BGSU programs in music, business, science and the Center for Photochemical Sciences.