Dr. Hang Li

"Teaching is the joyful journey where I discover each student's individual strength and develop the approach accordingly to bring out the best musicianship through the combination of solid technical fundamentals and refined musical expressions."

Born and raised in a family of pianists, Hang Li naturally inherited a deep passion for music and an exceptional talent at the piano. At the age of 10, Hang Li made her solo recital debut at the Tianjin Concert Hall in China. Her early performances quickly established her as a rising pianist of remarkable promise. In 1997, Ms. Li delivered the Chinese premiere of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.2, performing with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. She graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in China at an accelerated pace when she turned 20. Her exceptional gifting and dedication earned her the prestigious position of the youngest faculty member in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She was also appointed as the youngest member of the judging committee for the Chinese Musicians’ Association, and her extensive adjudicating expertise is still sought frequently in international competitions today. Hang Li has performed as a soloist in renowned concert halls throughout Europe, China, and America, as well as at The Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation, where she is honored to serve as a Legacy Pianist. Her playing style has earned critical praise as “truly poetic and exhilarating,” evincing an “exquisite and sensitive touch.”

Hang Li has been a member of the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music since 2009. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes technical precision, artistic expression, and a deep understanding of classical traditions. Believing in music as a universal language, she also founded an international music exchange program—active for over fifteen years—that enables young musicians from China and the United States to study abroad. With passionate dedication to advancing piano education and artistry, Hang Li gives masterclasses and lectures to inspire the next generation of pianists.

Her students have been selected into world-class piano competitions such as the Van Cliburn international Junior Competition and Hilton Head International Competition, and won numerous top prizes at prestigious piano events, including the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, Seattle international Piano Competition, Pacific Music Competition, ENKOR Competition, and Marilyn Mindell Piano Competition. They have won scholarships to music festivals such as the Aspen Music Festival, Morningside Music Bridge, Bowdoin International Festival, and Music@Menlo. Ms. Li's devoted instruction and mentorship have helped her students gain acceptance to the nation’s foremost institutions of continuing education: The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and Cornell Universities. 

Hang Li holds degrees from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing (B.M.), Southern Methodist University in Dallas (Artist Certificate), the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (M.M.), and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy (Artist Diploma). She studied with eminent pianists Joaquín Achúcarro, Ling Yuan, Li Qifang, and Mack McCray.

For more information, please visit www.hanglipiano.com

Dr. Igor Lipinski

Polish-born pianist Igor Lipinski made his orchestra debut performing Paderewski’s Piano Concerto with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor JoAnn Falletta on NPR’s Performance Today. As an orchestra soloist, he has appeared with the Rochester Philharmonic, Cape Cod Symphony, Woodstock Mozart Festival, Lakes Area Music Festival, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Shreveport Symphony, Norman Philharmonic, and Paderewski Symphony Orchestra at Chicago’s Symphony Center. His concerto repertoire spans from Mozart and Chopin to Bacewicz and Yoshimatsu. 

An active concert soloist, Lipinski has performed widely throughout the United States and abroad, including a live broadcast recital at 98.7 WFMT’s Levin Performance Studio in Chicago and appearances in 33 Variations, the award-winning theater play based on Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Recent highlights include recitals at the San Francisco International Piano Festival, College of Charleston International Piano Series, WNYC’s Greene Space in New York City, Teatro Jordão at the European Piano Teachers Conference in Guimarães, Portugal, and the Mozarthaus Museum’s Bösendorfer Hall in Vienna, Austria.

A passionate recording artist, Lipinski has released multiple albums on Spotify and Apple Music through his own concept record label, Vanishing Records, including Alchemy, Ravel, Masterpieces, Liszt, and his most recent release, In Tears, dedicated to the piano music of Leoš Janáček.

Lipinski’s early musical achievements include winning the Grand Prix and First Prize at the Paderewski Competition for Young Pianists in Tuchów, Poland, at age twelve. At seventeen, he appeared as a pianist in Kazimierz Braun’s theatre play Paderewski's Children at the University at Buffalo and graduated from the Paderewski Music High School in Tarnów, Poland, where he studied piano with Jaroslaw Iwaneczko.

Lipinski earned his Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and Musical Arts and Master of Music in Piano Performance and Literature from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music where he studied piano under the tutelage of Douglas Humpherys. As a teaching assistant of Vincent Lenti and Tony Caramia, he received Eastman’s Teaching Assistant Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Lipinski continued his graduate studies at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music earning his Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance under the tutelage of Alan Chow. Upon graduation from Northwestern, Lipinski joined the piano faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville as a Lecturer of Piano where he received the KMTA Teacher of the Year award. In 2017, he joined the piano faculty at the University of Oklahoma as an Assistant Professor of Piano, and in 2023, he was promoted with tenure to an Associate Professor.

At the University of Oklahoma, Lipinski teaches applied piano to a studio of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students, and teaches piano literature courses ranging from broad surveys to graduate seminars on Chopin, Liszt, and The Evolution of the Piano Recital. His teaching is rooted in the belief that performance and scholarship are inseparable, with courses frequently centered on hands-on projects in which students design original recital programs, compose their own concerto cadenzas, and explore interactive recital formats incorporating improvisation, storytelling, and multimedia.

Lipinski’s students are vibrant and creative performers and teachers, earning prizes at competitions such as the University of Oklahoma Concerto Competition and the Oklahoma MTNA Young Artist Piano Competition. His undergraduate students have been awarded OU Undergraduate Honors Research Program (UROP) grants for recording projects and the highly competitive Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (UReCA) summer fellowship. His graduate students have gone on to hold teaching and professional positions at renowned universities and pre-college programs in the United States and abroad.

An in-demand adjudicator and lecturer, Lipinski has served on juries for major national competitions, including the Dallas International Piano Competition, the Texas Music Teachers Association State Conference in Houston, and the MTNA Young Artist Piano Competition Finals in Chicago. He lectures internationally, most frequently at the European Piano Teachers Association (EPTA) International Conferences in Portugal, Italy, and Switzerland. His conference proposals have also been accepted at multiple national conferences in the United States, including the MTNA National Conferences in Chicago and Minneapolis.

At the University of Oklahoma, Lipinski has been awarded several competitive grants in support of his research and creative activity, including the Presidential Travel Fellowship Award, Arts! Arts! Arts!, and the Dean’s Circle Award. Most recently, his collaboration with Paul Christman, a faculty colleague in the OU School of Musical Theatre, earned a $15,000 grant from the Norman Research Council Faculty Investment Program to present at the largest performance art festival in the world, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. 

Lipinski’s research interest centers on the history of recital programming, a topic explored in his DMA dissertation, From Liszt to Victor Borge: A Legacy of Unique Piano Performances. This scholarly interest directly informs his own creative work as a performer. Drawing on two lifelong passions, classical music and magic, Lipinski created the interdisciplinary recital project Piano Illusions. Originally developed as his honors senior thesis at the Eastman School of Music, the project developed further through collaboration with Teller of the Las Vegas duo Penn & Teller and earned the WQXR Classical Comedy Contest award at Caroline’s on Broadway. Following its success in New York, Piano Illusions has been presented internationally at major concert series and festivals, including the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation in Salt Lake City and the Musica del Cuore Concert Series in Hong Kong. Recent performance highlights include appearances at international festivals in Edinburgh, Scotland and Gothenburg, Sweden.

For more information, please visit https://igorlipinski.com/