Mina Hirobe Perry has appeared as soloist and chamber musician in recitals across Germany, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, North America, Central America, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. She also maintains a particular affinity for the two-piano and four-hand repertoire.
She received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees with honors from Musashino Academia Musicae in Tokyo, studying under Professor Tetsushige Maruyama and Professor Konstantin Ganev, the latter a former assistant to the distinguished pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus at the Moscow Conservatory. After several years of concertizing throughout Japan and teaching privately, she moved to Germany, where she earned an Artist Diploma and served as a coach-accompanist at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold. She later continued advanced studies at the Glenn Gould School of Music in Toronto.
Ms. Perry approaches teaching as a means of helping each student uncover a distinctive musical voice while cultivating a refined technique capable of producing a beautiful, resonant sound. Her students have earned recognition in regional and national competitions, including multiple CAPMT (MTNA California Division) state winners, and have gained admission to leading conservatories and universities such as The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Eastman School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Peabody Institute, University of Southern California, UCLA, Indiana University, and the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin.
In 2013 she founded the Southern California Music Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to offering young musicians access to high-quality instruction; she continues to serve as its president. Through the institute she also established the John Perry Academy of Music International Piano Festival, a selective summer program for exceptionally gifted young pianists. Earlier she founded and directed the Honors Piano Performance Seminar at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, where she taught private piano, two-piano and four-hand repertoire, and chamber music. She now focuses her teaching on highly gifted young pianists at her private studio in Princeton, New Jersey.
Each summer she performs and teaches at festivals around the world, among them Summer Music on the Shannon (Ireland), Académie Internationale de Courchevel (France), Vianden International Music Festival (Luxembourg), Amalfi Coast Music Festival and Music Fest Perugia (Italy), Musicfest Perugia (Italy), the Hotchkiss School Summer Portal Piano Program (Connecticut), and the John Perry Academy Summer Festival (New Jersey). She is regularly invited to present master classes and to adjudicate piano competitions both nationally and internationally.