Live @ Baruch Performing Arts Center’s Engelman Recital Hall
55 Lexington Avenue, New York
Audience entrance on East 25th Street between Lexington & 3rd Avenues
Alina Rubinstein (piano) is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York where she teaches psychiatry residents as a faculty member at New York University Langone Medical Center and psychotherapy trainees at its affiliated Psychoanalytic Association of New York. Following several years' working in in music and art publishing after college and some graduate work in comparative literature at Columbia University, Dr. Rubinstein changed course to attend medical school, also at Columbia. Having studied piano privately from age six to seventeen, primarily with Laura Fratti in New York, she continued playing for her own pleasure. Dr. Rubinstein first performed chamber music with colleagues while in medical school, returning to it in 2001 after a 25-year hiatus. Since 2003 she has participated regularly in chamber music and advanced sonata workshops and recitals conducted by the Alaria Chamber Music Program in New York City as well as at several summer workshops including a classical concerto course that included a performance with orchestra in Vienna. She has also enjoyed performing with friends a number of times in the New York Bar Association's longstanding monthly chamber music series. In 2006, Dr. Rubinstein took up the cello, studying with Diliana Momtchilova, and now enjoys playing in chamber ensembles on that instrument as well.
Anne L. Taylor MD (cello) is currently Professor of Medicine, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Sr Vice President for Faculty Affairs and Career Development at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She obtained her undergraduate degree from Hofstra University and studied cello at Manhattan School of Music. She received her medical degree from the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine with subsequent research training at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the University of Iowa. She joined the faculty at Columbia University in November, 2007.
Dr. Taylor participates in a large number of chamber music programs including the Alaria Chamber Music program in NYC, the Bennington Chamber Music Conference, the Raphael Trio Workshop, the Manhattan String Quartet Workshop, and the Lake Placid Arts Institute Chamber Music Seminar.
Alex Pryrodny is a New York City based pianist who uses the techniques of improvisation derived from a lifelong study of classical, jazz and world music. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine in 1984, Alex started studying piano at the age of 3 and gave his first public performance at the age of 6. By early teens, Alex has won the title of Ukraine’s best young composer twice, as well as several international competitions in classical piano, composition, and improvisation. He moved to the United States at the age of 16 to study jazz and classical piano at the University of Maryland and the New School and through private lessons and masterclasses with Andre Watts, Hal Galper, Fred Hersch and others. Alex has been awarded 2nd place at the Montreux Jazz Solo Piano Competition in Switzerland in 2012 and toured in Italy, Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the United States. He has recorded 2 solo piano albums and 2 EPs and his work as an arranger has received multiple nominations for the Golden Melody Awards in Asia. In 2023 Alex’s life and work was featured in a short documentary “The Other Side of the Sea.
A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, Ms Luba Slepoi started playing piano at the age of 6 and continued her musical studies at Mussorgsky School of Music and later at St. Petersburg State Conservatory.
Upon immigrating to the United States in 1989, she worked as a vocal accompanist at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music while pursuing her BS degree in Computer Science. After graduation she worked as a computer programmer at Bloomberg and participated in the series of master classes at chamber music summer festivals studying with Menahem Pressler, Rita Bouboulidi, Inessa Zaretsky to name a few.
As a chamber musician, Luba Slepoi was a prize winner in the Artists International Competition, and performed throughout the Metropolitan New York area.
Currently Ms. Slepoi maintains a private piano studio.