FAITH ZUNIGA
Faith Zúñiga will perform Chopin’s 2nd Piano Concerto in October 2021 with the Reston Community Orchestra under the baton of Dingwall Fleary. She and her colleagues around the U.S. and the world presented the entire Beethoven sonatas and several concerts of music by black composers online in 2020, presented by Kyu Butler, president of the Missouri chapter of the World Piano Teachers Association. Ms. Zúñiga has previously won the concerto competition at George Mason University and the undergraduate piano competition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additional competition awards include Semifinalist in the Victor Elmaleh Concert Artists Guild Competition and Semifinalist in the Byrd International Piano Competition. Ms. Zúñiga has performed Prokofiev Concerto No. 1 and Beethoven Concerto No. 5 with the Mason Symphony Orchestra and also performs frequently with her trio, The Dream Trio, throughout the Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. She is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts student at George Mason University, where she studies with the masterful Dr. Anna Balakerskaia. She owes a great debt of gratitude to her teacher Dr. Alexander Sklioutovski for his wonderful teaching and inspiration.
Ms. Zúñiga is an active adjudicator and has judged competitions such as the Robert & Frances Allen Young Artist Competition, the Bland Competition, the NVMTA Spring Festival and Sonata Festival, and the MCAA Spotlight Auditions. She also served a two-year volunteer term as a board member (Recording Secretary) of the NVMTA (Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association). As an accomplished piano teacher on a continual quest for excellence in teaching and performance, Faith Zúñiga’s mission is to provide high-quality instruction to motivated students. Within her piano studio, she has created a levels framework with separate Regular, Honors, and Professional tracks based on expected achievement by school grade and measured through successful participation in the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) exams.
Ms. Zuniga believes that crucial moments in music teaching happen in the formative childhood years. Great instruction during that time can set a student up for lifetime success. She believes it is a great honor to teach children to play the piano well, and teaching a child from the age of 5 or 6 until they reach 18 is a wonderful long-term project with incredibly rewarding results. Ms. Zúñiga teaches her students not just how to play piano in a fluid, expressive, and relaxed way, but also how to think about music in terms of music theory. She also teaches her students how to listen for intervals and harmonies in order to not just excel at the RCM exams and other area competitions and festivals, but also become truly proficient at the piano and develop a deep love for and appreciation of music. Her students have been selected as winners of the State Certificate Awards through the RCM exams, and have been invited to play at the multi-state Southeast Region Celebration of Excellence recitals. They have also won awards including 1st Place in the Mary Smart competition (at the state level, after passing both local and regional levels), and many other awards including the American Protege International Piano & Strings, Summer Gala, and Romantic Music Competitions; the Art Guild of Clifton Scholarship Award; the MCAA Music Competition; the Spotlight on the Arts Competition; the Vasya Georgieva Award for Artistic Excellence; and the Honors Recital for the NVMTA Sonata Festival, among others. Her students have performed at Carnegie Hall at both the Weill and Stern Auditoriums, the Kennedy Center, the George Mason University Harris Theatre, the Woman’s Club of Arlington, Fairfax Old Town Hall, the Southeast Region of Excellence RCM recital in Florida, and many other locations.