Meet the Coaches
Peter Miyamoto
Artistic Director
Peter Miyamoto has enjoyed a brilliant international career, performing to great acclaim in recital and as soloist in Canada, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Switzerland, China, and Japan, and in major US cities such as Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. In 1990, Miyamoto was named the first Gilmore Young Artist. He won numerous other competitions, including the American Pianist Association National Fellowship Competition, the D’Angelo Competition, the San Francisco Symphony Competition and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Competition.
Miyamoto has performed as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Chautauqua Symphony, Erie Philharmonic, Florida Philharmonic, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and Knoxville Symphony, working with such conductors as Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, David Lockington, Raymond Harvey, Lawrence Leighton-Smith, William Henry Curry, and Kirk Trevor. Dr. Miyamoto holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music, Yale University School of Music, Michigan State University, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. His teachers included Maria Curcio-Diamand, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Marek Jablonski, Aube Tzerko, and Ralph Votapek, as well as Szymon Goldberg, Felix Galimir and Lorand Fenyves for chamber music.
Currently Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair of Piano at the University of Missouri, Peter Miyamoto formerly taught at Michigan State University, and the California Institute of the Arts and has presented masterclasses worldwide. From 2003-2015 he served as head of the piano faculty at the New York Summer Music Festival and more recently served on the piano faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music’s Young Artist Summer Program and the Curtis Mentor Network Program in Philadelphia.
Miyamoto’s six solo CDs, available on the Blue-Griffin label, have received excellent reviews in periodicals such as Gramophone, International Record Review, Fanfare, and American Record Guide and were recognized by the American Prize. He is also Executive Director of the Plowman Chamber Music Competition, which takes place in Columbia, MO this spring.
Ayako Tsuruta
Piano Teaching Artist
Ayako Tsuruta is Executive and Artistic Director of the Odyssey Chamber Music Series and Founder/Artistic Director of the Plowman Chamber Music Competition. As the winner of concerto competitions, she has appeared as soloist with the Juilliard Symphony, Eastern Connecticut Symphony, and Connecticut Chamber Orchestra, as well as Wallingford Symphony Orchestra in the United States, and with University Symphony Orchestra in Edmonton,
Alberta. She has also performed at summer festivals in Aspen, Banff, Ravinia and Tanglewood, Meranofest and Accademia Chiagiana in Italy, and Figueira da Foz in Portugal, as well as recitals in the United States, Canada, Germany, Lebanon, and Serbia.
Ms. Tsuruta studied piano with Hiroko Ogura in Nara, Japan, subsequently with Leena K. Crothers at the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, Josef Raieff at Juilliard School, Claude Frank at Yale University, Maria Curcio-Diamand in England, and Marek Jablonski at the University of Alberta. Her influential teachers also include Arkady Aronov, Stephen Coombs, Katsurako Mikami, and Artur Pizarro. She has studied chamber music with Lorand Fenyves, Joseph Fuchs, Felix Galimir, Jacob Lateiner, Harvey Shapiro, and Zoltán Székely to name a few.
Ms. Tsuruta has taught as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and at the University of Missouri, in addition to the Hartwick College Summer Music Institute and Festival and New York Summer Music Festival in Oneonta for 11 years. In Columbia, she maintains an active private piano studio, in addition to teaching theory and ensemble classes on Saturday mornings at the MU School of Music through Odyssey’s Columbia Music School.
