Icicle Creek Winter Piano Festival
Masterclasses and lessons for pre-professional pianists.
Winter Piano Festival is not happening in 2024, but we hope to see you again soon!
Extraordinary teachers
in an extraordinary setting
Icicle Creek Center for the Arts annual Winter Piano Festival welcomes advanced pianists for an intensive week of private lessons, masterclasses, studio classes, and recitals. Applicants must be at least 18 years old to apply.
2023 Piano Festival Faculty
Christina Dahl (Stony Brook University)
Gilbert Kalish (Stony Brook University)
Oksana Ejokina (Pacific Lutheran University)
- Piano Festival tuition and fees are $750 (includes tuition, lodging, and meals). Limited amount of scholarship assistance is available. $50 application fee/deposit required during registration.
- Please submit your registration as soon as possible. Application deadline is January 1, 2023. Please contact Oksana Ejokina (ejokinoa@plu.edu) if you are interested in participating. Students who have not attended the Festival before, must submit a letter of recommendation from their teacher to be emailed to Oksana directly at the above email address.
- As you make your travel arrangements to Icicle Creek, please note that arrival date is January 11 (Wednesday) and departure date is January 16 (Monday). All participants will take a COVID-19 antigen test (provided by Icicle Creek) upon arrival.
- $50 non-refundable deposit. If you cancel more than 30 days before the session start date, then you will receive all money paid except the $50
- 8 to 30 days before start of session, 50% refund
- 7 days before start of session, no refund
All events take place in Canyon Wren Recital Hall
Winter Piano Festival Faculty Concert
with Christina Dahl, Oksana Ejokina, and Gilbert Kalish | Saturday, January 14 at 2:00 PM | Get Tickets
Young Artist Concert
with the brilliant Winter Piano Festival students | Sunday, January 15 at 2:00 PM | Get Tickets
Learn from the pros
Oksana Ejokina
Russian-born pianist Oksana Ejokina appears frequently as guest recitalist and chamber musician on concert series across the United States and abroad. She has soloed with the Seattle Symphony, St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic and Tacoma Symphony and played in venues such as the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Davies Orchestra Hall in San Francisco, and Klassik Keyifler Festival in Turkey. She has been featured on live radio broadcasts on such stations as WFMT-Chicago, KUOW and KING FM in Seattle, Maine Public Radio, and NPR’s Performance Today. Oksana is the pianist of the Volta Piano Trio, whose recordings received accolades in multiple international music magazines, such as The Strad, Gramophone and American Record Guide.
A sought-after teacher, Ejokina is Chair of Piano Studies and Assistant Professor of Music at Pacific Lutheran University. She has been associated with the Icicle Creek Center for the Arts for nearly fifteen years serving as Artistic Director of several flagship classical music programs.
Christina Dahl
Christina Dahl has established a reputation as one of the leading teachers of her generation, working for nearly twenty years in the Stony Brook University graduate music department, a program that has fostered eclectic pianists whose careers range from Bang On a Can and Yarn/Wire membership to prizewinning in the Cleveland Competition, the Gina Bachauer, the Orleans and other international solo competitions. She has directed chamber music jointly with the Emerson Quartet at Stony Brook for more than ten years. She has recently given masterclasses at New England Conservatory, Royal College of Music Stockholm and the Steinhardt series at NYU. Since childhood her focus has been on chamber music: Christina can be heard on the Bridge, Albany and Tzadik labels. She has twice been a cultural ambassador for the US State Department, and has toured and taught master classes in Africa, South America and the United States. She has played at the Gilmore International Piano Festival, Aspen, the Banff Centre, the Steans Institute at Ravinia, been a fellow twice at Tanglewood, has collaborated with her distinguished colleagues at Stony Brook in promoting new music, and has premiered pieces written specifically for her and Gilbert Kalish by composers on the faculty. She has played at the Gilmore International Piano Festival, Aspen, the Banff Centre, the Steans Institute at Ravinia, and Tanglewood.
Gilbert Kalish
As head of the performance faculty, Gilbert Kalish had done much to create the uniquely supportive and stimulating environment of Stony Brook’s music department. Through his activities as performer and educator, he has become a major figure in American music making. A native New Yorker, Mr. Kalish studied with Leonard Shure, Julius Hereford and Isabelle Vengerova. He is a frequent guest artist with many of the world’s most distinguished chamber ensembles. He was a founding member of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, a pioneering new music group that flourished during the 1960’s and ’70’s. He is noted for his partnerships with other artists, including cellists Timothy Eddy and Joel Krosnick, soprano Dawn Upshaw, and, perhaps most memorably, his thirty-year collaboration with mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani. In addition to teaching at Stony Brook, he has also served on the faculties of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Banff Centre and the Steans Institute at Ravinia. Mr. Kalish’s discography of some 100 recordings encompasses classical repertory, 20th-century masterworks and new compositions. In 1995 the University of Chicago presented him with the Paul Fromm Award for distinguished service to the music of our time.