Manhasset Doctor to Perform at the Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition

Adedamola Agboola

A retired Manhasset doctor will compete against 72 other amateur pianists in June at the Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition in Forth Worth, Texas.

Ophthalmologist Michael Slavin, 65, was one of 72 pianists 35 and older who aren’t professional piano performers or instructors to be selected from among 159 hopefuls to compete for the $2,000 grand prize.

“All the years that I was a physician I would play concerts at ophthalmology meetings and some of my fellow ophthalmologists who were some of the most wonderful chamber musicians also performed at our conventions,” Slavin told FestivalDC.com in 2014 at the WIPAC music festival in Washington, D.C. 

Slavin wrote on his website that he has been playing piano since he was five years old and attended the Julliard School of Music prepatory division before the age of nine.

During his time at Julliard, Slavin said, he gave many piano recitals — two at New York City Hall. 

At 11, he said he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D major (the Coronation) with the Little Orchestra Society in Lincoln Center. 

He said on the website he performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music after winning a piano concerto competition several years later. 

Slavin attended Cooper Union to study physics before heading to medical school.

Following medical school, he worked on Long Island as a practicing ophthalmologist and neuro-ophthalmologist for 25 years. 

On his website he said that after retiring as ophthalmologisan he has focused more on his performances, recently recording all 21 Chopin Nocturnes, and all 4 Chopin Scherzi.

He was awarded first prize in the Chicago piano concert competition in May 2012, second prize in the international piano competition in Colorado Springs, and a finalist in each international solo piano competition in Chicago and Washing DC in 2013. 

He is a member of the New York Piano Society.

Efforts to reach Slavin were unavailing.

Share this Article