Pianist Paul Tuntland Sánchez (1982) was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and started his piano studies at age four. From 1998-2005, Paul studied with Dr. Tamás Ungár, Executive Director of the TCU/Cliburn Piano Institute and one of the world's foremost pedagogues, at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, where he became the first freshman in the history of the university to win the School of Music's Piano Concerto Competition. He received full academic scholarship and the prestigious Presser Scholar award in recognition of his outstanding musicianship and academic excellence, and graduated in 2005 summa cum laude.
Paul has performed in solo recital throughout North America and Europe, and in such festivals as the Barcelona Festival of Song and the I Festival Internacional de Piano Reynosa, Mexico. An advocate of musical education for children, Sanchez performed with pianist Shields Collins Bray in a Musical Awakenings series of educational recitals sponsored and produced by the Van Cliburn Foundation in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
His performances with orchestra have included concerts with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, the TCU Symphony Orchestra, the Cherokee Symphony, and the Fort Worth Civic Orchestra, performing such varied works as Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, Rodrigo's Concierto Heroico, and Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30. Sanchez is also an active composer. Most recently, his new work, Perfect Light, for piano, orchestra, tenor and bassoon was premiered by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra during five concerts over the 2006 holiday season.
He received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2005 and earned his Master of Spanish Music degree with Ms. Maria Teresa Monteys and Ms. Alicia de Larrocha at the Academia Granados-Marshall in Barcelona, Spain, in 2007. His new CD, España: Piano Music of Spain from the 19th and 20th Centuries, was released by the Mundo Arts label in July of 2006.
Sanchez is the founder and executive director of the Dakota Sky International Piano Festival in Sioux Falls, South Dakota ( http://www.dakotasky.org ), now in its first year and set to take place between 12 - 26 July, 2007, with the aim of bringing bringing young, exciting pianists from around the world to perform recitals and teach masterclasses over two weeks of intensive musical activity.
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