MORE ABOUT THE MUSICIANS

PORNPHAN BANTERNGHANSA
Pianist and composer Pornphan Banternghansa is a native of Bangkok, Thailand. She has been the recipient of many music awards including Second prize at the Centre for the arts at Mizner Park’s Scholarship Competition in Boca Raton, Florida, Winner at the Salzburg College’s summer program piano competition in Austria, and First Prize winner at the Fourth Bangkok Chopin Competition, along with ‘Best Performance of Mazurka’ and ‘Best Performance of Nocturne’. Other than performing extensively in Thailand, she has been featured in many recitals and festivals worldwide where she also performed her compositions such as Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, Poland, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, India and USA.

Pornphan has participated in numerous music festivals including the Salzburg College Summer Program, Chautauqua Music Festival and Aspen Music Festival. She was also selected as the first ever pianist from Thailand to participate in the prestigious Verbier Academy in Switzerland and received a scholarship from HRH Princess Galayani Vadhana Krom Luang Naradhiwas Rajanagarindra. While at Verbier she received public masterclasses held by world renowned pianists such as Dimitri Bashkirov, Nelson Georner, and Claude Frank. She has also worked with Joseph Kalichstein, Gabriel Chodos, Mikhail Kopelman, Logan Skelton, Robert Levin and Paul Badura-Skoda.

Pornphan received a Bachelor’s degree doubling major in Piano Performance and Composition as a full scholarship recipient from the University of Miami under Rosalina Sackstein, a pupil of Claudio Arrau, and the late Dr. Teresa Escandon, a student of Jorge Bolet. She was also awarded ‘Outstanding Student in Music Composition, Traditional and Media Writing’. As a recipient of a Collaborative Piano Graduate Award, she held a Doctoral of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music studying with Professor Rebecca Penneys while she was also a teaching assistant for a piano literature class at Eastman, a staff accompanist at Ithaca College and serves as a faculty at Community School of Music in Ithaca, NY. Pornphan is currently a piano faculty at Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.

TASANA NAGAVAJARA
Coming from the Thai classical instrument, Saw Duang, Tasana Nagavajara started learning the violin at the age of 9. His Thai teachers included Suphot Chomboon, Sutin Srinarong and Choochart Pitaksakorn at Chulalongkorn University. The turning point in his musical education came in 1989 when he was granted a full scholarship by the International Menuhin Music Academy (IMMA) to study with Alberto Lysy and Johannes Eskar in Switzerland. He thereby gained the golden opportunity to become a member of the Camerata Lysy Gstaad which performed under Lord Yehudi Menuhin in most major European cities, USA, Canada and South America. Further training with Roland Baldini at the Vorarlberg Conservatory in Austria, and with Kathryn Lucktenberg at the University of Oregon, Eugene, USA, completed his formal education in the West.

Upon returning home, Tasana Nagavajara was a founding member of the Faculty of Music at Silpakorn University, and has also served as Director of the Silpakorn Summer Music School (SSMS) and Pro Musica Junior Program. As a professional musician, he has performed the major violin concerti with Thailand’s leading orchestras, and served as Concertmaster of the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra under Hikotaro Yazaki for 10 consecutive seasons. He was also recipient of a Princess Galyani Vadhana scholarship to attain a violin master class by Hrachya Hrutunian in Neustadt, Germany.

In recent years he has concentrated his efforts on chamber music by introducing repertoire hitherto unfamiliar to the Thai audience, with himself giving regular violin and viola recitals and leading various chamber ensembles, that culminated in the successful revival of the pioneering Pro Musica Orchestra under the baton of M.L. Usni Pramoj which went on tour to 4 European countries in 2012.

Tasana Nagavajara has been intensifying his international career with his involvement since 2011 as faculty member and chamber performer in the Estate Musicale Frentana in Lanciano, Italy, and in 2014 he joined The International Akaroa Music Festival, New Zealand. He has twice given recitals at the historic Mendelssohn House in Leipzig, Germany. He is currently active as the artistic director of Pro Musica Orchestra.