Jessica Chow Shinn

Jessica Chow Shinn joined the Conservatory in 2018 and is an associate professor of collaborative piano.

She was a faculty member at the Juilliard School in the College and Evening divisions from 2012–2017. She is the cofounder and coartistic director of the pianoSonoma Music Festival, which brings together artists in residence and adult musicians to collaborate and perform in private and public concerts and community workshops across the country.

Passionate advocates of new music, Shinn and her husband, pianist and Conservatory Interim Executive Director Michael Shinn, have given world premieres by composers such as Adam Schoenberg and Thomas Cabaniss. In April 2017, they performed the world premiere of Double Rainbow, a two-piano concerto by Cabaniss, with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. Shinn’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. The Shinns have been invited to speak about the role of the arts in society and to perform at the Pebble Beach Authors and Ideas Festival.

Shinn’s interest in the integration of theater and song led to her appointment as music director of an innovative New York University production of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben.

Shinn 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 a Yamaha artist.