Vassa Shevel

About

Vassa Shevel is a distinguished pianist, chamber musician, and educator. Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, she won the Cappella Competition at age eleven performing the Bach Double Concerto and began her undergraduate education at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, where she studied with Galina Orlovskaya. Immigrating to the U.S. with her family in 1978, she continued her studies at the New England Conservatory and SUNY Purchase and earned her master's degree at the Juilliard School, where she was a student of Oxana Yablonskaya. She has studied piano with Jacob Maxin, Russell Sherman, Jerome Lowenthal, Gregory Haimovsky, and Karl Schnabel, and chamber music with Yehudi Wyner, Jennifer Langham, Lawrence Lesser, Nancy Cirullo, Paul Doctor, and Robert Levin. A finalist in the Murray Dranoff International Competition, Ms. Shevel has performed at Alice Tully Hall, Symphony Space, Symphony Hall in Boston, and major venues and festivals in Europe. She is the Artistic Director and co-founder of the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble, which she founded in 2005 with pianist Inessa Zaretsky to make classical music highly accessible to all New York area residents. She is also a member of the Philadelphia Piano Duo with Claire Belkovsky, Co-Artistic Director of the Phoenix Chamber Music Series in New York, and Co-Artistic Director of the Incontri di Canna Festival in Calabria, Italy. Ms. Shevel is on the piano faculty at the Mannes College of Music at The New School and maintains an active private teaching practice.

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