100 Notable alumni of Curtis Institute of Music

Praised as the "Piano Poet", Cheng Wai is a pianist and Steinway Artist from Hong Kong. She is a winner of the Hong Kong Young Music Performer Award of the International Year of Youth and voted as one of the Top Ten Outstanding Young Persons by the Junior Chamber International Hong Kong in 2009.

Ang Li is a classical pianist.

Eytan Pessen is a German Israeli pianist and voice teacher, currently at the Opera houses of Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Warsaw, Vienna (Volksoper), Zürich and international festivals. He was former opera director of the Semperoper in Dresden, artistic advisor to Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and former casting director of the Staatstheater Stuttgart.

Elliot Madore is a Canadian lyric baritone with an international operatic career.

Frank Guarrera was an Italian-American lyric baritone who enjoyed a long and distinguished career at the Metropolitan Opera, singing with the company for a total of 680 performances. He performed 35 different roles at the Met, mostly from the Italian and French repertories, from 1948 through 1976. His most frequent assignments at the house were as Escamillo in Georges Bizet's...

Gwendolyn Bradley is an American soprano who performed on many opera and concert stages worldwide.

Howard Mitchell was an American cellist and conductor who was born in Lyons, Nebraska and died in Ormond Beach, Florida. He was principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra from 1949 to 1969.

Ethel Stark, CM GOQ was a Canadian violinist and conductor.

Seo Jung-hack is a South Korean baritone singer.

Kenneth Andrew Cowan is a Canadian church and concert organist who currently serves as professor of organ at the Shepherd School of Music of Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Yoonjung "Yoonie" Han is a South Korean-born American classical pianist.

Timothy Cobb is the American current principal double bassist with the New York Philharmonic. He previously taught at the Peabody Institute of Music, and joined the Manhattan School of Music faculty in 1992. Cobb also currently teaches at SUNY Purchase, Lynn University, Rutgers University: Mason Gross School of the Arts, YOA Orchestra of the Americas, and Mannes School of Music...

Chin Kim is a Korean-born American classical violinist, largely educated in the United States through the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music.

Gabriella Smith is an American composer from Berkeley, California.

Andre-Michel Schub is a classical pianist.

Lorne Munroe was an American cellist. He was principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1951 to 1964 and principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic from 1964 to 1996. He was a featured soloist more than 150 times during the 32 seasons he played for the New York Philharmonic. His last performance with the orchestra as a member of...

Wilbur Whilt "Wib" Evans was an American actor and singer who performed on the radio, in opera, on Broadway in films and early live television.

Jenny Q Chai is a Chinese-American pianist. She is active throughout China, the United States, and Europe, and specializes in contemporary piano music. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Manhattan School of Music where she earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

Nicolas Chumachenco or Chumachenko was a Polish-born violin soloist, professor, and director of the Queen Sofía Chamber Orchestra. He won the Merit Diploma Konex Award in 1999, as one of the best Bow Instrument Performer of that decade in Argentina.

Eugen Sîrbu or Sârbu, known professionally as Eugene Sârbu, was a Romanian classical violinist. He had an international career as a soloist, recitalist and conductor (from the violin). In 1978, he won both the Paganini Competition and the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition. He premiered works from living composers including Einojuhani Rautavaara, written for him, he recorded violin concertos by...

Henri Temianka was a virtuoso violinist, conductor, author and music educator.

Michael Tree was an American violist.

Tim Fain is an American violinist and composer, best known for his performances in the feature film soundtracks to Black Swan, 12 Years a Slave, and Moonlight, and his work with American composer Philip Glass.

John Mack was an American oboist.

Pierrette Alarie, CC CQ was a French Canadian coloratura soprano. She was married to the French-Canadian tenor Léopold Simoneau.

Adrian Anantawan is a Canadian violinist. Anantawan, who began studying violin at age nine, has performed with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and at the White House. He is an alumnus of the Etobicoke School of the Arts in Canada, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Yale University and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Growing up in the neighbourhood...

Daron Aric Hagen is an American composer, writer, and filmmaker.

David Serkin Ludwig is an American composer, teacher, and Dean of Music at The Juilliard School. His uncle was pianist Peter Serkin, his grandfather was the pianist Rudolf Serkin, and his great-grandfather was the violinist Adolf Busch. He holds positions and residencies with nearly two dozen orchestras and music festivals in the US and abroad. His choral work, The New...

Dmitry Albertovich Yablonsky is a Soviet-born American-israeli classical cellist and conductor, who was educated at the Juilliard School of Music and Yale University.

Walter Hendl was an American conductor, composer and pianist.

David Shifrin is an American classical clarinetist and artistic director.

Ulf Hoelscher is a German violinist.

Daniel Alan Heifetz is an American concert violinist and pedagogue best known as the Founder of the Heifetz International Music Institute. His career has been focused on education and the art of communication through performance.

Paul Jacobs is an American organist. He is the first organist to receive a Grammy Award. Jacobs is currently the chair of the Juilliard School's organ department and is considered "America’s premier organ performer…."

Vladimir Sokoloff was an American pianist and accompanist on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music. In addition to his teaching work with the accompanying, piano and chamber music students, he was an active performer.

Joseph Harry Silverstein was an American violinist and conductor.

Anthony McGill is the principal clarinetist for the New York Philharmonic, after having served for a decade as principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Jan Savitt, known as "The Stokowski of Swing", from having played violin in Leopold Stokowski's orchestra, was an American bandleader, musical arranger, and violinist.

Nadia Reisenberg Sherman was an American pianist.

Reid Anderson is a bassist and composer from Minnesota. He is a member of The Bad Plus with drummer Dave King, pianist Ethan Iverson, saxophonist Chris Speed, and guitarist Ben Monder. The original lineup of The Bad Plus first played together in 1989 and formally established the band in 2000. Anderson attended the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and graduated from...

Josef Špaček is a Czech solo violinist and until 2019/20 season a concertmaster of the Czech Philharmonic orchestra. He performs on the c. 1732 “LeBrun; Bouthillard” Guarneri del Gesù violin, generously on loan from Ingles & Hayday.

Timothy Chooi is a Canadian violinist and University of Ottawa professor of Chinese–Indonesian ethnic background. He won the First Prize at the 2018 International Joseph Joachim Violin Competition and Second Prize at the 2019 Queen Elisabeth Competition. He has also won prizes at the International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition, the Michael Hill International Violin Competition, and the Grand Prize at...

Gilles Apap is a French classical violinist. Born in Béjaïa, Algeria, he was raised in Nice, France. In 1985 he won first prize in the contemporary music category at the Yehudi Menuhin Competition. He served as concertmaster with the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra for 10 years, but has since focused on his career as a soloist with orchestras around the...

Eleanor Sokoloff was an American pianist and academic who formed a piano duo with her husband, Vladimir Sokoloff. She taught piano on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music from 1936 until her death in 2020.

Muriel Burrell Smith was an American singer. In the 1940s and 1950s, she was a star of musical theater and opera, and was also the off-film ghost singer in several hit movies. She is perhaps best known in the UK for her 1953 #3 hit single, "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me", which was first covered in 1965 by Mel...

Ruth Laredo was an American classical pianist.

Mohammed Fairouz is an American composer.

Edward "Teddy" Paul Maxwell Abrams is an American conductor, pianist, clarinetist, and composer. He is currently Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra and previously led the Britt Festival Orchestra.

Claire Huangci is an American classical pianist. She lives in Frankfurt am Main.

Yekwon Sunwoo is a South Korean classical pianist. In 2017, at 28 years old, Sunwoo was the first Korean to win the gold medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He won the Sendai International Music Competition in 2013.

Jennifer Koh is an American violinist, born to Korean parents in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Helen Amelia Gilbert was an American film actress and musician.

Leonard Joseph Rose was an American cellist and pedagogue.

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg is an Italian and American classical violinist and teacher.

Eugene George Istomin was an American pianist. He was a winner of the Leventritt Award and recorded extensively as a soloist and in a piano trio in which he collaborated with Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose.

Jaime Laredo is an American violinist, violist, conductor, and music educator of Bolivian heritage. Laredo burst upon the international classical music scene at age 17 in 1959 when he won First Prize for violin at the International Queen Elizabeth Grand Prize in Brussels, Belgium (at the time, the youngest winner in the history of the prize and the first Latin...

Aaron Rosand was an American classical violinist and violin pedagogue.

Jasmine Choi is a Korean-born flautist, who was educated in the US and is currently living in Austria.

Joseph Norman Alessi is an American classical trombonist with the New York Philharmonic.

Shura Cherkassky was a Russian-American concert pianist known for his performances of the romantic repertoire. His playing was characterized by a virtuoso technique and singing piano tone. For much of his later life, Cherkassky resided in London.

Jenny Oaks Baker is an American violinist. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award, and is a former member of the National Symphony Orchestra. Baker has released twenty studio albums, several of which have ranked high on the Billboard charts.

Thomas Schippers was an American conductor. He was highly regarded for his work in opera.

Jonathan Biss is an American pianist, teacher, and writer based in Philadelphia. He is the co-artistic director (with Mitsuko Uchida) of the Marlboro Music Festival.

Zhang Haochen is a Chinese pianist. He was a Gold Medalist of the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, becoming one of the youngest winners in the history of the competition. Zhang received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2017.

Lukas Foss was a German-American composer, pianist, and conductor.

Ruth Slenczynska is an American classical pianist and the last living piano student of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, was an American composer, lyricist, and librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration. He is known for The Cradle Will Rock and for his off-Broadway translation and adaptation of The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt...

Jennifer Elaine Higdon is an American composer of contemporary classical music. She has received many awards, including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto and three Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto in 2010, Viola Concerto in 2018, and Harp Concerto in 2020. Elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in...

Elisabeth Ann Dentzel, better known as Elisabeth Waldo, is an American former violinist, composer, conductor and ethnomusicologist.

Kate Liu is an American classical pianist. On October 20, 2015, she won the third prize and the Polish Radio Award for the best performance of mazurkas in the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition.

Ignat Aleksandrovich Solzhenitsyn is a Russian American conductor and pianist. He is the conductor laureate of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the principal guest conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. He is the son of Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Paul Anthony Romero is an American computer and video game music composer and classical pianist who has won awards for his work.

Jorge Bolet was a Cuban-born American concert pianist, conductor and teacher. Among his teachers were Leopold Godowsky, and Moriz Rosenthal – the latter a renowned pupil of Franz Liszt.

Yu-Chien Tseng (Chinese: 曾宇謙; pinyin: Zēng Yǔqiān; Wade–Giles: Tsêng Yü-ch'ien; born August 24, 1994) is a Taiwanese violinist. In 2012 he was fifth laureate in the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, where he also won both the Musiq'3 and the Klara-Canvas prizes awarded by the public. In the 15th International Tchaikovsky Competition held in 2015, Tseng won the 2nd prize in...

Ned Miller Rorem was an American composer of contemporary classical music and a writer. Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was considered the leading American of his time writing in the genre. Frequently described as a neoromantic composer, he showed limited interest in the emerging modernist aesthetic of his lifetime. As a writer, he kept—and...

Yefim "Fima" Naumovich Bronfman is a Soviet-born Israeli-American pianist. He has performed as a soloist and with major symphony orchestras globally since 1975. He won a Grammy Award in 1997.

Shuler Paul Hensley is an American singer and actor. Shuler has appeared in eight Broadway productions, earning a Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 2002 for his performance as Jud Fry in the revival of Oklahoma!, along with several nominations for Drama Desk Awards and Outer Critics Circle Awards in his career.

Anna Moffo was an American opera singer, television personality, and actress. One of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of her generation, she possessed a warm and radiant voice of considerable range and agility. Noted for her physical beauty, she was nicknamed "La Bellissima".

Eric Lu is an American classical pianist. The winner of the 2025 XIX International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw and the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition, he has performed with many of the world's major orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, and...

Alan Gilbert is an American conductor and violinist. He is principal conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and music director of the Royal Swedish Opera. He was music director of the New York Philharmonic from 2009 to 2017.

Aimi Kobayashi is a Japanese classical pianist. She was a finalist at the XVII International Chopin Piano Competition and won 4th prize at the subsequent XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition.

Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian composer, librettist, director, and playwright who is primarily known for his output of 25 operas. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship and never officially became an American citizen. One of the most frequently performed opera composers of the 20th century, he wrote his most successful...

Paavo Järvi is an Estonian conductor. He has been chief conductor of Zurich's Tonhalle since 2020.

Hilary Hahn is an American violinist. A three-time Grammy Award winner, she has performed throughout the world as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors, and as a recitalist. She is an avid supporter of contemporary classical music, and several composers have written works for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, two...

Samuel Osmond Barber II was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the mid-20th century. Principally influenced by nine years' composition studies with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute and more than 25 years' study with his uncle, the composer Sidney Homer, Barber's music usually eschewed the experimental trends of...

Juan Diego Flórez is a Peruvian operatic tenor, particularly known for his roles in bel canto operas. On June 4, 2007, he received his country's highest decoration, the Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Sun of Peru.

Ray Chen is a Taiwanese-Australian violinist and YouTuber. He was the winner of the 2008 International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition and the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition. Since then, he has regularly collaborated with the world's foremost orchestras and appeared at renowned concert halls.

Leonard Bernstein was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American-born conductor to receive international acclaim. Bernstein was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history" according to music critic Donal Henahan. Bernstein's honors and accolades include...

Ouyang Nana is a Taiwanese singer, musician and actress. A member of the Ouyang family, known for its artistic background in Taiwan, she has primarily focused her career in mainland China, known for films Beijing Love Story (2014) and Secret Fruit (2017), TV series Yes! Mr. Fashion (2016), and variety show The Birth of An Actor (2017).

Giovanni "Nino" Rota Rinaldi was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare screen adaptations, and for the first two installments of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather trilogy, earning the Academy Award...

Lynn Harrell was an American classical cellist. Known for the "penetrating richness" of his sound, Harrell performed internationally as a recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with major orchestras over a career spanning nearly six decades.

George Alexander Walker RCA is a Canadian artist and writer best known for his wood engravings and wordless novels.

Ahn Eak-tai was a Korean classical composer and conductor. He conducted numerous major orchestras across Europe, including the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Rome Philharmonic Orchestra. Ahn composed "Aegukga", a song best known as the national anthem of South Korea, Korean Dance, Nongae, and the Symphonic Fantasy Korea. His unpublished works, some of which have been...

Yuja Wang is a Chinese-born American pianist. She began learning piano at the age of six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Lang Lang is a Chinese classical pianist. He has performed with major orchestras around the world and appeared at many leading concert halls. Active since the 1990s, he was the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and many of the top American orchestras. In 2000, a Chicago Tribune music critic called him "the...

Teo Gheorghiu is a Swiss-Canadian pianist.

Liza Ferschtman is a Dutch classical violinist who appears internationally, both as a soloist with orchestra and in chamber music. She received the Nederlandse Muziekprijs in 2006 and has directed the Delft Chamber Music Festival since 2007.

Kit Armstrong is an American classical pianist, composer, organist, and former child prodigy of British-Taiwanese parentage.

Rossen Milanov is a Bulgarian conductor. He is music director of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra & New Jersey's Symphony in C. He is also principal conductor of Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias, in Spain and the former music director of Bulgaria's New Symphony Orchestra. He is the music director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.