Photo by Nancy Nassiff
Born in Osaka, Japan, Pianist Yumi Suehiro began studying piano at age 6, and marimba a year later. In Japan, Ms. Suehiro won numerous national and international competitions, including the top prize at the Kobe International Competition as the youngest winner.
An undergraduate scholarship student at Lehman College (CUNY), she graduated magna cum laude, and she received her Master of Music degree in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music as a student of Zenon Fishbein and Peter Vinograde. While at Manhattan, she won second prize in the school’s 2010 concerto competition (with John Harbison’s Piano Concerto), and in 2011 was chosen to perform Richard Wilson’s “Flashback” for Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s master class.
Ms. Suehiro has appeared at numerous festivals for contemporary music, such as June in Buffalo, the Princeton Sound Kitchen, NUNC! (Chicago), Red Note (IL), New Music New College (FL), Sound of Stockholm, and the Darmstädter Ferienkurse (where she received an honorable mention). She is a core member of Ensemble Mise-en, with which she performed Ligeti's Piano Concerto in January 2017. Most recently, her recording of Hans Thomalla’s complete works for solo piano was released on Sideband Records.
She has taught at Lehman College (CUNY), and has served on the faculty at Lehman College Continuing Education.