He studied at Yale University (B.A., cum laude), the Mozarteum in Salzburg (Fulbright Fellowship) and at the Juilliard School (M.M. and D.M.A.). He was formerly Assistant Professor of Piano at William Paterson University and is currently the Director of Keyboard Studies and Piano Curriculum at Juilliard, where he teaches piano literature, graduate studies, chamber music, and directs Juilliard PianoScope, the Piano Department’s performance series. He gives piano master classes and lectures at conservatories and universities in the U. S., Europe, and Asia, and he was 2010 Visiting Professor at Shanghai Normal University. His awards for written work in musicology include the Henry Hart Rice Prize and the Richard F. French Prize. His principal teachers in piano included Peter Frankl, Karlheinz Kämmerling, and Robert McDonald, and he also worked with Andras Schiff, Jerome Lowenthal, and Claude Frank; his history and theory studies were with Allen Forte, Robert Morgan, L. Michael Griffel, and Maynard Solomon.

He is Artistic Director of both the acclaimed Music Mondays concert series in New York City and Co-Artistic Director of the Skaneateles Festival, in the Finger Lakes.