Colburn School gets $5 million for new piano professor chair

This post has been corrected.

The Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles has received a $5-million endowment gift from its board chairwoman Carol Colburn Grigor to create a new piano professor chair. Italian pianist Fabio Bidini will be the first person to occupy the position, the Colburn announced on Thursday.

The school said that Bidini will begin teaching piano students in the Colburn’s Conservatory of Music starting in the fall. Bidini, who is teaching in Germany, will hold the title Carol Grigor Piano Chair.

Grigor is the daughter of the late Richard Colburn, the L.A. businessman who was the major financial backer of the school that bears his name. Grigor, who also sits on the board of directors of the L.A. Philharmonic, resides in L.A. and in Scotland.

A spokeswoman at the Colburn said the school has one other endowed faculty chair -- the Jascha Heifetz Distinguished Violin Chair, held by Robert Lipsett.

The Colburn said that piano instructor John Perry will be stepping down from his position after seeing through his current studio students.

Bidini has served as professor of piano at the Hochschule fur Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin since 2009.

[Updated]: A previous version of this post incorrectly identified Richard Colburn as Ronald Colburn.

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