Our Artists

Pianist Miri Yampolsky was born in Moscow and raised in Israel, where she studied with Hannah Shalgi and Michael Boguslavsky at the Tel Aviv Academy. At age 16, she was a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta, and in subsequent years has performed with the Jerusalem Symphony, the Mainz Symphony, Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Johannesburg, and the Xalapa Symphony in Mexico .  Miri studied in Madrid with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Escuela Superiór De Musica Reina Sofia, and later with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory of Music.  A recipient of the AICF awards and a top prize-winner of the Iturbi International Piano Competition in Spain and the ARD Competition in Munich, Miri has been a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, and performed at Ravinia, Olympic, Tucson, and the Peninsula Music Festivals in the US, as well as the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, the Upper Galilee Music Festival in Israel, Hitzacker, Schwetzingen and Berlin Festwoche in Germany. Miri is Senior Lecturer at Cornell University, where she has taught chamber music and piano since 2005, and together with her husband Xak Bjerken, she co-directs Mayfest, Cornell’s international chamber music festival, where she has collaborated with the Casals, Formosa, and Chiaroscuro String Quartets, as well as distinguished artists Mikhail Kopelman, Steve Doane, Cynthia Phelps, Philippe Graffin, Tatiana Samouil, and Zvi Plesser, amongst others.  Ms. Yampolsky’s recordings can be found on Naxos, MDG, and Open G Records.  She is the proud mother of Misha, Anna, and Maya.