BUCKHANNON, West Virginia — West Virginia Wesleyan College’s Department of Music will host a performance by acclaimed guest pianist Gabriel Merrill-Steskal Tuesday, Oct. 13 in Loar Auditorium at 7 p.m. The performance is open to the public.

Merrill-Steskal will perform masterworks by Chopin and Beethoven, as well as Etudes by Scriabin, Stravinsky, and American composer Michael Kropf. New music faculty Lyndon Ji will join Dr. Merrill-Steskal for George Gershwin selections from the Great American Songbook, recently arranged by Logan Skelton for piano four-hands.

Merrill-Steskal will also present a master class for WVWC music students in Loar Auditorium.  

His recent musical activities are wide-ranging and varied, including commissioning and premiering new pieces for fortepiano by Michael Kropf and Chenghao Li, engraving and recording a new critical edition of Jospeha Auernhammer’s violin sonata on period instruments with Anna Okada, and appearing with the Ann Arbor Symphony as a soloist performing Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. He has won awards in international competitions on both piano and fortepiano (including the Seattle International Piano Competition, Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, and SFZP International Fortepiano Competition) and recently was a fellow at the Gilmore Piano Festival and Pianofest in the Hamptons. He has also recorded for Blue Griffin Records as part of an upcoming album of new piano music by William Horne.

Merrill-Steskal holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance from the University of Michigan, where he studied piano with Logan Skelton and fortepiano with Matthew Bengtson. Before turning to music full-time, he completed his undergraduate degree with a double major in music and chemistry, graduating summa cum laude from Whitman College and studying piano with David Hyun-Su Kim. He has also studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson.

In addition to his performance activities as a soloist and chamber musician, Merrill-Steskal is an active teacher and scholar. He is Assistant Professor of Piano and Industry at New Mexico Highlands University, where he teaches piano, music history, music theory, and other courses. He is also an experienced fortepianist interested in 18th- and 19th-century performance practice and was the Visiting Artistic Researcher at the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards for Spring 2025, presenting original lecture-recitals on historical pianos. His most recent research projects include studying prolongational aspects of folk-based pitch structures in Bartók’s music and examining characteristics of embellished repeats in Mozart and Chopin. 

ABOUT WEST VIRGINIA WESLEYAN COLLEGE
West Virginia Wesleyan College (WVWC) is a private, four-year residential liberal arts and sciences college in Buckhannon, West Virginia. A tradition of excellence for 136 years, West Virginia Wesleyan is home to 14 Fulbright Scholars. The Princeton Review ranked Wesleyan as one of its 2027 Best Colleges in the Mid-Atlantic Region of the United States. U.S. News & World Report’s 2027 Best College Rankings designated Wesleyan 4th in Best Value – Regional Universities (South). WVWC offers students nearly 60 majors and 40 minors; graduate programs in athletic training, business administration, creative writing, nursing and counseling; 22 NCAA Division II athletic programs; multiple performing arts groups; and more than 50 organizations. Founded in 1890, the College is closely affiliated with the United Methodist Church and abides by the Wesley doctrine that emphasizes service to others. For more information, visit wvwc.edu.