Chamber Ensemble Competition 2027

Stefanie Harger Gardner (bass clarinet) teaches clarinet, chamber music, and music theory at Glendale Community College and Ottawa University. Previously she served on the faculty at Northern Arizona University and Mesa Community College. Gardner maintains an active performance career, performing with Arizona Opera, the Phoenix Symphony, Red Rocks Chamber Music Festival, Seventh Roadrunner, the internationally recognized Paradise Winds, and grant-winning Égide Duo, whose mission is to commission, record, and perform music inspiring social change. She has performed in conferences for the International Clarinet Association, the International Double Reed Society, the North American Saxophone Alliance, and the International Viola Congress. Gardner’s chamber music albums are recorded on the Soundset label and can be heard on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube. In addition to performing and teaching, Gardner has a strong interest in woodwind pedagogy. In 2012, Gardner won first prize at the International Clarinet Association Research Competition with her study, “An Investigation of Finger Motion and Hand Posture during Clarinet Performance,” where she collaborated with the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing at ASU to study hand posture and finger motion during clarinet performance using CyberGloves®. Recently, she was awarded “Outstanding Contributions in Private Teaching” by Arizona State University, and has been hired by Norton Publishing Company to review theory and aural skills textbooks. Dr. Gardner received Bachelor, Master, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Clarinet Performance from Arizona State University studying with Robert Spring. Gardner is a Henri Selmer Paris/Conn-Selmer Performing Artist playing Privilege clarinets, a Silverstein Pro Team Artist, and uses Selmer mouthpieces.

Called by The Boston Globe, “an intelligent, agile and breathtaking violinist”, Danwen Jiang has concertized as concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Poland, and across the United States. She has appeared in concert halls such as Carnegie Hall in New York City, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., La Salle Gaveau in Paris, Cultural Centre Concert Hall in Hong Kong, and Beijing Concert Hall in China.  Her recordings are available on China Record Corporation, Eroica label, and Soundset Recordings. The American Record Guide called her “an exceptional violinist”, while the Fanfare Magazine described her performance as “absolutely exquisite”.

As a chamber musician, Professor Jiang has collaborated in concerts with members of the renowned Guarneri, Juilliard, Tokyo, Emerson, and Shanghai String Quartets, The Boston Players, American Chamber Players, and other distinguished musicians such as André-Michel Schub, Lilian Kallir, Igor Kipnis, Ani Kavafian, Eric Rosenblith, Stanley Drucker, and Regina Carter. She has appeared at Manchester Music Festival, Sanibel Chamber Music Festival, Yale Chamber Music Series, Rutgers SummerFest, Taconic Music, Montecito International Music Festival in the United States, Festival du Quercy Blanc and Festival Dan le Gard in France, Harpa International Music Festival in Iceland, InterHarmony International Music Festival in Italy and Germany, Victoria International Music Festival in Canada, among others. As an orchestral performer, she was Concertmaster for the Riverside Symphonia in New Jersey from 1995-2001.

A highly regarded string pedagogue, Danwen Jiang is Professor of Violin in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre at Arizona State University in the United States, where she was a recipient of the Professor of the Year Special Recognition Award, President’s Tenure/ Promotion Faculty Exemplar Award, and Distinguished Teacher Award. She was featured as soloist and masterclass clinician by the American String Teachers Association in national conferences. She served as a visiting faculty at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and at the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign. As guest professor, she has taught at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavík, State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart in Germany, Sydney Conservatorium of Music at The University of Sydney in Australia, Vancouver Academy of Music in Canada, and Academy of Music in Kraków, Poland. She is a member of the faculty at the Red Rocks Virtual Music Institute in Arizona, and the Euro Arts Academy based in Germany and South Korea.

Danwen Jiang studied violin with Arnold Steinhardt, Oscar Shumsky, Taras Gabora, and Weijian Zhao. Other influential musicians include Jaime Laredo, Michael Tree, Zara Nelsova, Felix Galimir, Josef Gingold, Joseph Silverstein, György Pauk, and Seymour Lipkin.

For more information about Professor Danwen Jiang, please visit http://www.danwenjiang.com.

Hailed for his “rhythmic integrity, singing tone quality, and refinement” (Clavier), Swedish-American pianist Elias-Axel Pettersson has established himself as a formidable soloist, chamber musician, and pedagogue. A Mason & Hamlin Concert Artist, he has garnered prizes on the national and international level, and has collaborated with numerous musicians, including David Felberg, Henk Guittart, Josh Perlman, Michiel Schrey, Guillaume Tardif, and Krzysztof Zimowski. In 2008, Pettersson formed Duo Giocoso with French violinist Roland Arnassalon; in 2017, he formed Æterna Sirius with pianist Jessica Yam. Pettersson champions contemporary composers such as Alan Belkin, Alvin Curran, Drea Pressley Tischhauser, and Altin Volaj. He premiered Michael Mauldin’s Petroglyph for Piano (2011) and recorded Gabriel Madden’s La Herse (2009), featuring a rare Sauter 1/16-microtonal piano. Pettersson released three albums on Axel Records. He has cultivated a loyal online following through his websites and YouTube channel and is co-host for the music division of the podcast And If Love Remains.

Pettersson is a frequent performer, lecturer, and masterclass teacher throughout the USA, Canada, and Sweden, and is known for being a conscientious, patient, and motivational guide with a methodical, yet holistic and creative approach. He aims to coordinate the mind, body, and spirit by combining his extensive music theory and history background with his training in Alexander Technique. His students have won numerous prizes and have been admitted to undergraduate and graduate programs throughout the USA and Canada. He has been a jury member for national and regional competitions.

In 2015, Pettersson founded Southwest Piano Festival, a summer performance series dedicated to promoting piano music and performers in New Mexico. In 2018, he joined Arizona Piano Institute’s Board of Directors, where he now coordinates the annual piano competition. He has lectured, taught masterclasses, and performed alongside faculty artists including Elisabeth and Eugene Pridonoff, Yuri Kot, and Eckart Sellheim and Dian Baker. In 2019, Pettersson joined the faculties of Arizona School for the Arts and Rosie’s House, where he is currently co-chair of the piano department. He also joined the faculty of Adamant Music School in Vermont.

He studied with Paul Stewart, Sergei Babayan, Larissa Dedova, Douglas Humpherys, and Maribeth Gunning, and has played for André Watts, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Arnaldo Cohen, Pavel Nersessian, Dina Joffe, and the Guarneri String Quartet. Pettersson holds a doctorate from the Université de Montréal, where he taught for 8 years.