Jessica Chow Shinn

Pianist Jessica Chow Shinn is the co-founder and co-Artistic Director of the pianoSonoma Music Festival. Having just finished its tenth season, this unique festival brings together Artists in Residence, dynamic and innovative professional performers, with adult musicians of all backgrounds to collaborate and perform at the Green Music Center in Sonoma County, CA. For the 2020 edition, Jessica, and her husband, pianist Michael Shinn, led the festival in pivoting to a virtual one, pianoSonoma at Your Doorstep, which was rich with artistic engagement, analysis courses, Artist Exchange talks, and both private and livestreamed public performances. Jessica is also currently associate professor of collaborative piano at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She was a faculty member at The Juilliard School in the College and Evening Divisions from 2012-2017.

Passionate advocates of new music, Jessica and Michael have given world premieres by composers such as Adam Schoenberg and Thomas Cabaniss. They commissioned the latter to write a major two-piano concerto, Double Rainbow, that will be the centerpiece of a forthcoming album featuring the music Cabaniss has written for the duo. In April 2017, Jessica and Michael performed the world premiere of Double Rainbowwith the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and again in 2018 with the San Luis Obispo Symphony. Jessica’s other performing engagements have included recitals in Alice Tully Hall, Weill Hall at the Green Music Center, the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur in Montréal, and Salle Cortot in Paris. Jessica has been invited to speak about the role of the arts in society and to perform at the Pebble Beach Authors and Ideas Festival.

Jessica is dedicated to the musical education of both adult and pre-college students. As a musicianship coach in the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Program, she has worked individually with the rising singers of tomorrow.

Jessica received her Doctor of Musical Arts at Juilliard, where she studied with Margo Garrett, Jonathan Feldman, and Brian Zeger. She received her Master of Music from New England Conservatory of Music and her Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College. She is also a published author in the Journal of Physical Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry.

Jessica is a Yamaha Artist.