About Our Performers

James Carrabino

James Carrabino is currently in his Junior year at Yale and is a member of Trumbull College, majoring in Global Affairs and Classics. He is from London, England, where he attended St. Paul’s School as a John Colet Academic Scholar and Music Scholar. James began his piano studies at age 5 with Caroline Gowers and has given numerous recitals across the United Kingdom. He currently holds the United Kingdom’s Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music and has soloed in venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Cadogan Hall and St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Throughout his time at St. Paul’s School James studied with Charles Owen at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Tessa Nicholson at the Royal Academy of Music. He was subsequently admitted to the Bachelor of Music program at the Royal College of Music to study Piano Performance under the tutelage of Niel Immelman. While a member of the Royal Academy of Music’s pre-college division James won both the Academy’s senior Piano Solo and Chamber Music competitions as well as a series of external competitions, including the overall Under-18 Piano Prize at the annual Oxford Music Festival. As a student at the Royal College of Music, he was chosen as the sole orchestral pianist to perform with the RCM Philharmonic Orchestra, and was the youngest student to represent the College in its annual master class with renowned British pedagogue Imogen Cooper. In the summer of 2016 James was awarded a place at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York City, and was selected for master classes with some of the world’s most pre-eminent artists, including Jerome Rose and Alexander Kobrin.

Since enrolling at Yale College, James has been a student in Wei-Yi Yang’s piano studio at the Yale School of Music. During his second semester he won the 2017 William Waite Concerto Competition, an achievement that had not been accomplished by a first-year student for many years. He had additionally pursued violin as a joint study throughout his school years, serving as concertmaster of the St. Paul’s School Symphony Orchestra.

This past summer James attended the Aspen Music Festival and School where he studied with Anton Nel and Hung-Kuang Chen, and performed in a public masterclass for Julian Martin. He was also selected for the community outreach music lessons program for young children in Aspen. At Yale he is currently taking part in chamber music coached by Michael Friedmann, and has an active role in the Yale University Guild of Carilloneurs and the Yale Undergraduate Piano Collective. In addition to music, James is interested in Middle Eastern policy, and spent the beginning of the summer working with the Jordanian Embassy in Washington, D.C. He is also involved with Yale’s Political Union and International Relations Association.

Anthony Ratinov

Anthony Ratinov commenced piano studies at the age of four under the teaching of his grandmother, Edit Ratinova, who taught for many years at the Gnessin School of Music in Moscow, Russia. He was awarded first place at the Maryland MTNA piano Competition in 2009, and second place at the II International Chopin Competition in Hartford, CT in 2012. He also received honorable mentions at the MTNA Eastern Division Competition in 2010, and at the III International Chopin Competition in Hartford, CT in 2011. He received the Award for Excellence in the Arts, presented by The National Society of Arts and Letters-Washington DC Chapter (2015), at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.

Anthony was also selected as an alumni performer at the 2016 Award for Excellence in Arts Ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center, and performed at the 2016 National Society of Arts and Letters Annual Viennese Waltz Ball at the Cosmos Club, Washington, DC.  In addition to playing in his high school’s jazz band and orchestra, he gave many individual piano recitals at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, and at the Ring House Retirement Community Center. He also played for the Young Artists of America at Strathmore, and for the Maryland Classic Youth Philharmonic Orchestra at Strathmore.

Anthony is currently a junior at Yale University studying chemical engineering along with music. He studies piano with Professor Wei-Yi Yang, and is part of various musical organizations, orchestras, and musical theater groups on campus. In 2017 and 2018 , Anthony participated in the Virtuoso & Belcanto Music Festival in Lucca, Italy; he received the third prize in the 2017 piano competition.

James Carrabino (left) and Anthony Ratinov