Rebecca Penneys

Early life

Rebecca Penneys was born on October 2, 1946. Her mother, Rose Kaplan Penneys (1912–2010), worked for social causes, and her father, Alexander Penneys (1912–1994), was a radiologist. Sol Kaplan, her uncle, was a pianist-conductor-composer, and her cousin, Boris Gorelick, was an artist. Raised as a prodigy, Penneys grew up in Los Angeles studying piano from the age of 3, and dance from the age of 5. Her primary mentors in California were Carmelita Maracci, dance, Victoria Front and Aube Tzerko, piano, and Leonard Stein, composition. She performed her first solo piano recital at the age of 9 and performed as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the age of 11. Other mentors were Rosina Lhévinne and Artur Rubinstein.

Education and career

Penneys attended Beverly Hills High School and continued her formal education at Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, studying piano with Gyogry Sebok and Menahem Pressler, chamber music with Janos Starker and Josef Gingold, and composition with Iannis Xenakis. She was awarded the unprecedented Special Critics’ Prize at the SeventhInternational Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, an award created in her honor. She was a top prizewinner in the 1975 Second Paloma O'Shea International Piano Competition in Spain. In 1972, she made her New York debut at Alice Tully Hall. The same year she was appointed to the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. In 1974, she founded the New Arts Trio at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music (with Carol Sindell, violin and Hamilton Cheifetz, cello). The Trio won the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music in 1980 (with Piotr Janowski, violin and Steven Doane, cello). The Trio was Trio-in-Residence at the Chautauqua Institution from 1978 to 2012 and has made two United States Information Agency Cultural State Department tours of Europe in 1985 and 1987. Penneys made a USIS State Department solo tour of Japan in 1980. She has taught and performed in such summer festivals as Sitka, Marlboro, Eastern, Aspen, Vermont Mozart, Montreal, Shawnigan Johannesen, Tel Hai Israel, Peninsula, Roycroft, Mammoth Lakes, Chautauqua, and Music Mountain.

Current professional life

Penneys has been professor of piano at the Eastman School of Music since 1980 and chairwoman of the Chautauqua Institution Piano Department from 1985 to 2012. She was a resident artist as pianist-founder of the New Arts Trio at Chautauqua from 1978-2012. In 2013 Rebecca launched the Rebecca Penneys Friends of Piano (non-profit 501c3) and the Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival as a sequel to her well-known Chautauqua piano program. The University of South Florida in Tampa hosts the festival in its all-Steinway facility. RPPF is tuition-free for college-age students worldwide. In 2001 she was appointed Artist-in-Residence at St. Petersburg College in St. Petersburg, Florida where she directs the SPC Piano Series. In 1999 she founded the Salon Chamber Music Series, a five concert series with Mikhail Kopelman, violin and Stefan Reuss, cello held at the Rochester Academy of Medicine. In 2015 she was given a courtesy position as Steinway-Artist-in-Residence at the University of South Florida in Tampa. A devoted teacher, she has received recognition for teaching a keyboard technique (Motion and Emotion) that allows pianists to achieve individual performance goals without physical strain or injury. Combining a busy concert schedule with seminars and master classes worldwide, she teaches international students at Eastman School of Music and at the Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival. Her current and former students include prizewinners in international competitions, and hold teaching posts on every continent. Penneys is a Steinway Artist and has given special concerts for Steinway & Sons.

Solo recordings

Centaur Records:

Fleur De Son Classics:

Trio recordings

Fleur De Son Classics:

Publications