Lillian Brickman, who studies guitar at Hochstein with Tim Shannon, was one of four students (see the list below) who participated in a masterclass on Sunday, December 1 with award-winning guitarist Marko Topchii, presented through a collaboration between Hochstein and Rochester Classical Guitar.
During the masterclass, each student played a short piece of music, and then Topchii picked out one or two things for the student to focus on, such as new ways of fingering a particularly challenging phrase or helping them work on phrasing or hand position. A masterclass allows the visiting instructor to go into much more detail and other students in the audience can learn from the instruction provided to each student.
Born to a musical family in Ukraine, Topchii has won numerous awards – including the 2023 Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artist Competition – and has appeared in the world’s most important venues, including Carnegie Hall and performance halls in Tokyo, Paris, Kyiv, and Budapest, among others. He is in Rochester to perform a concert on Monday, December 2 as part of his 2024-25 tour. (Click here for details.)
Lillian is a senior at Rochester’s School of the Arts and has studied guitar at Hochstein for more than ten years with Timothy Shannon. In 2024, she was one of the top winners of a Hochstein Merit Scholarship. She performed solo guitar on the Live from Hochstein concert series in Hochstein Performance Hall in April 2024.
Guitar Masterclass with Marko Topchii:
Isaac Crouse, Eastman School of Music (Student of Nicholas Goluses)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Fugue from Prelude, Fugue, and Allegro BWV 998
Sam Newlin, SUNY Geneseo (Student of Ken Luk)
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Prelude 4
Félix Benkí, Eastman School of Music (Student of Nicholas Goluses)
Leo Brouwer: The Guardians of Magic
Lillian Brickman, The Hochstein School (Student of Tim Shannon)
Paganini: Romanze from Grand Sonata in A Major