Our Mission
Since 2011, Lansum International Music Festival & Los Angeles Young Musician International Competition is a California Non-profit organization with a mission to explore the talents of young musicians, provide performance experiences for young musicians, bring different cultures together with the music, provide international young musicians possible educational opportunities, and encourage music appreciation.
CEO – Frank Chang
Board of Music Directors
Daniel Carlin, Chair
Prof. Daniel Carlin, Vice Dean of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, Professor of Practice and Director/Chair of Screen Scoring programs, is a 30-year industry veteran who has collaborated on hundreds of film and television projects. He was an Emmy-winning music editor and an Emmy-nominated music director. Carlin’s “greatest hits” include the Academy-award-winning (Oscar) films: The Last of the Mohicans (music supervisor and conductor; the Golden-Globe winning films: Quest For Camelot (music production supervisor); the Oscar-nominated films: What’s Love Got to Do with It (music supervisor, song producer); and the Emmy winners: The Temptations, Emmy-nominated music director, conductor, soundtrack producer.
Being a frequent lecturer, interviewer, panelist, jurist, concert producer, and event host, Carlin has appeared formally at many renowned universities, conservatories, institutes, and concert halls in North America, Asia, and Europe. He was the CEO of Segue Music for the past 25 years, the industry’s largest and most successful provider of on-set and post-production music services in Hollywood history. He was also music editors and supervisors at Segue worked on well over one thousand projects with such honored composers as Burt Bacharach, Elmer Bernstein, Bruce Broughton. Carlin served two elected terms as Chair of The Recording Academy (the GRAMMY organization) and 25 years on the Motion Picture Academy’s Music-Branch Executive Committee.
In 2004, Carlin segued into full-time music education, serving first as executive director of the Henry Mancini Institute. In 2007, he became Chair of Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music, where he remained for five years before taking over Thornton’s Screen Scoring program.
Nancy Weems
As a concert pianist, Nancy Weems has performed extensively in the United States and in Europe, Asia, Mexico, Central America, and the former Soviet Union. Selected as a United States Artistic Ambassador, Ms. Weems represented the United States in three international concert tours, and presented a solo debut recital at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. She has appeared as guest artist with numerous orchestras, and has given master classes in conservatories in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the West Indies. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Texas, Ms. Weems was an exchange professor and guest performer at the Royal Academy of Music in London; at Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul, Korea; and in 2008, for the Kuala Lumpur International Master Classes in Malaysia. Ms. Weems has recorded for the Albany and the Bay Cities labels. The recording, “Classical Hollywood” was nominated for a Grammy award in 1990. In addition, she has been featured in recordings of American composers Arnold Rosner and Chris Theofanidis.
Currently, Nancy Weems is the Madison Endowed Professor of Piano and Coordinator of the Keyboard Area at the University of Houston Moores School of Music in Houston, Texas. Her students have won top awards in numerous state, national, and international piano competitions and many of her current and former students are now professional performers and teachers worldwide. Professor Weems was named the Outstanding Collegiate Teacher of the Year in l99l by the Texas Music Teachers Association, received a University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award in 1995, and was named the Moores School of Music Faculty of the Year in 2004.
Nancy Weems regularly presents lectures, recitals and teacher workshops and has been a featured MTNA convention artist for the states of New York, Washington, Minnesota, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Wyoming, and Texas. In addition, Ms. Weems has been a frequent presenter at the Music Teachers National Association Convention and the World Piano Pedagogy Conferences.
Robert Hamilton
An internationally respected pianist and recording artist, Robert Hamilton has had the unusual distinction of being enthusiastically reviewed by two Chief Music Critics for The New York Times. Harold C. Schonberg (who also authored The Great Pianists) wrote: “He is a very fine artist. All of Hamilton’s playing has color and sensitivity…one of the best of the million or so around.” And Donal J. Henahan reported: “It was an enthralling listening experience. We must hear this major talent again, and soon!”
Hamilton studied at Indiana University with the first winner of the coveted Levintritt award, Sidney Foster, and graduated summa cum laude. A move to New York City brought studies with Dora Zaslavsky of the Manhattan School, additional coaching from legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz, and a host of monetary awards from the Rockefeller Fund and U.S. State Department, launching a strong career here and abroad. Five prizes in major international competitions added more concerts.
He has made countless concert tours of four continents, appearing in the major halls of most music capitals, like the Chicago Symphony, National Symphony, the great hall of the Moscow Conservatory, etc. He has been heard over numerous radio networks including NPR, ABC, BBC, VOA, Armed Forces Network, DRS Zurich and Radio Warsaw.
A piano professor in the Arizona State University School of Music, Hamilton featured in the book The Most Wanted Piano Teachers in the USA. Hamilton also served as Artistic Director of the London Piano Festival during the 1990s.
Larisa Rakhmanova
Larisa Rakhmanova is a graduate of the Tashkent State Conservatory and holds Master Degree in piano performance and teaching. She started her music career as accompanist for conducting classes at the Tashkent State Institute of Culture. Larisa has been serving as Director of Orchestra (Concert Manager) of National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan.
Larisa has been the head of Keyboard Studies at the University of Putra Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur for five years, from 1998 to 2003. Many of her students have been invited to perform at performance showcases by the British Council, and also have been there, winning performance scholarship in their further piano studies overseas in the UK at postgraduate. Numbers of her students have won the national, international piano competitions.
Currently Larisa maintains her piano studio in Winnetka, Northridge area, California. She is a member of MTAC and is one of the director at board members of San Fernando West Valley Branch, California.
Dr. David Rentz
David Rentz, an associate professor, teaches music and directs the choirs at Chaffey College, having taught music and conducted choral ensembles at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yale University, and, most recently, Pomona and Scripps College, Claremont Colleges.
He is the artistic director of the Orange County Symphony, choral director at the First Congregational Church of Riverside, and resident conductor of the Chamber Opera Players of Los Angeles.
From 2005 to 2010, he lived in New York City, where he served as choral director at The Brearley School, a K-12 girls preparatory school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and was a principal conductor and co-founder of C4: the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective, a collectively-run ensemble devoted to performing works written in the last twenty-five years.
David received his B. Mus. summa cum laude from Washington University in Saint Louis, where he was a Mylonas Scholar in the Humanities, earned his M.M at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and received his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale University School of Music, where he was director of the University Chapel Choir and a member of the internationally-renowned Yale Schola Cantorum.
He has received fellowships and grants from the Yale alumniVentures program and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was part of the 2011 Oregon Bach Festival Master Class in Choral Orchestral Conducting.
Dr. Andrew Park
Dr. Park is a renowned Korean-American solo pianist, chamber musician, and pedagogue. He is First Prize winner of Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition(currently known as Virginia Waring International Piano Competition). Dr. Park is a devoted performer of chamber music. He travels around to play chamber music with his own group, the Park Trio. He was also invited to have some performances with El Camino College/CTS Orchestra, OMC Orchestra, ICO Orchestra, and Dosan Philharmonic Orchestra. Dr. Park is also an active private studio teacher in Fullerton, Orange County, and his students have won the prizes from numerous competitions throughout the country. Dr. Park has been invited to give masterclasses and lectures in Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the U.S. He is a chairperson of MTNA Annual Evaluation and Sonata/Sonatina competition. He is also a judge of Lansum Competition, SYMF and MTAC competitions including CM Advanced Panel. Dr. Park has participated in teaching piano at the Idyllwild Arts Academy and Los Angeles City College, and he also has worked as a first lecturer at USC Thornton School of Music. Currently, Dr. Park is an adjunct professor at Azusa Pacific University and Fullerton College.
Dr. Park has performed at the venues such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, La Mirada theatre, Pasadena Pacific Civic Auditorium, McCallum Theatre, Marsee Auditorium, Scottish Auditorium, Wilshire Ebell Theater, Muckenthaler Art Center, President Nixon’s Library, Zipper Hall, Thayer Hall, Pasadena Public Library, Fullerton Public Library, Idyllwild Arts Concert Hall, UCLA Concert Hall, Azusa Pacific University Munson Hall, Fullerton College Theatre, Tainan University Concert Hall, USC Concert Hall, and a lot of different churches.
During summer, he is a faculty member of John Perry Academy of Music, Montecito International Music Festival, ASIA International Piano Academy & Festival in Korea, and Idyllwild Summer Program. As a conductor, Dr. Park is the music director at the New Life Vision Church, the conductor of the Montecito International Music Festival Youth Orchestra, CTS Chamber Group, and the conductor of Laguna Road School Choir. Dr. Park has recorded the Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens with Idyllwild Chamber Orchestra for the children of the world and a Christian CD, “priere” with his chamber group, the Park Trio.
Dr. Park studied piano with Nelms McKelvain at the Idyllwild Arts Academy. Then, he completed his entire bachelor, masters, and doctoral degrees at the University of Southern California with a world renowned pianist, John Perry.