Kinwai Shum

Pianist Kinwai Shum was awarded the fourth prize in the Eleventh Schubert International Piano Competition in Dortmund, Germany last September. He became the first Chinese prizewinner in the history of the competition. Kinwai took the third prize in the 1999 Hilton Head International Piano Competition in the United States, and was the only Chinese semifinalist in the 2001 G. B. Viotti International Music Competition and the 2002 Casagrande International Piano Competition, both in Italy. His other awards include a fourth prize in the Eighth Hamamatsu International Piano Academy Competition in Japan and the Diploma d’Honor in the 2004 Maria Canals International Music Competition in Barcelona, Spain. Among the many venues in which he has performed are the Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City, the Dortmund Concert House, the Hamamatsu Concert Hall, and the historic Marble Hall of Schloss Mirabell in Salzburg. As a con¬ certo soloist, he played with the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra. As a collaborative pianist, he has appeared in the Sarasota Music Festival and in the Casalmaggiore Music Festival in Italy. In his native Hong Kong, Kinwai has pet-formed numerous solo and duo recitals, aftd^ecorded several times for Radio 4 of the Radio Television Hong Kong. Kinwai received his early musical training at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts under the guidance of Eva Lue. In 1996, he traveled to the United States to study at the Eastman School of Music. During his study, he was the recipient of the Eastman Scholarship and served as the first teaching assistant of his piano professor Douglas Humphreys. Two years later, he graduated with a Master of Music degree and a specially awarded performer’s certificate. He furthered his study with pianist Edward Auer at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he was at the same time a music theory instructor teaching undergraduate and graduate review classes. Kinwai is an enthusiastic teacher. He has been on the piano faculty of the Hong Kong Baptist University since 2001, and taught also at the Hong Kong Institute of Education and at the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong.