2026 Preliminary Round — San Francisco Regional, CA

Date: June 6th, 2026

Location: San Francisco Conservatory of Music

200 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco, CA 94102

Application Fee:

—Early Bird: $170

—Regular: $185

Modern multi-story white building with glass windows at street corner in San Francisco, with a historic church dome visible in the background, traffic lights, cars, pedestrians, and construction barricades.

Important Date:

  • April 1, 2026 - Applications Submission Deadline (Early Bird)

  • April 20, 2026 - Applications Submission Deadline

  • June 6, 2025 - San Francisco Regional Competition

  • June 6, 2026 - Finalists announced

  • August 6-7, 2025 - Final Round Competition (San Francisco) & Awards Ceremony 

Meet the 2025 San Francisco Jury (2026 will announce soon)

Get to know the distinguished members of our jury, each bringing a unique perspective and wealth of experience to this year’s competition.

  • Omri Shimron is a pianist and educator based in Pleasanton, California. His career combines teaching at the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels, performances as solo and collaborative pianist, lectures and lecture-recitals, adjudication, and leadership roles in professional organizations.

    At Cal State East Bay (Hayward) he is an Associate Professor of Music and Piano Area Coordinator at the Department of Music, where he teaches applied piano, group piano, piano ensemble and other courses. His CSUEB piano students come from diverse backgrounds, including a large group from South China Normal University. 

    Outside higher-ed he maintains a private teaching studio (virtual and and in-person), and has held leadership positions for  the California Association for Professional Music Teachers (CAPMT) — as co-president of the San Francisco/East Bay chapter, Concerto Chair (NorCal) and state Board Member At-large (North). Shimron is also in demand as an adjudicator for Music Teachers Association of California (MTAC), the American Beethoven Society, the SoCal International Piano Competition, and others.

    Throughout his career, Shimron has presented many lecture-recitals for such organizations as the College Music Society, Performing Indeterminacy, and at many colleges and universities, including Duke, Virginia Tech, Arizona State, Elon University, and others. His topics range from C. Ph. E Bach’s keyboard music to Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka and Chen Yi’s Ba Ban.  He has worked closely with living composers and premiered several works by Christopher Dietz, Marco Alunno, Ben Hackbarth, and Christopher Brackel.

    Shimron’s debut solo CD, Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, 36 Variations on ‘¡EI Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido!’ was released on New Focus Recordings in 2014. Click here for the New Focus download page, which includes audio samples, liner notes, and credits. The CD is available for purchase on iTunesAmazon, and as a free stream on Spotify.

  • Daniel Glover has performed in 42 states and 28 countries throughout Europe, Asia, South  America and the Caribbean.

    Mr. Glover has trained with such luminaries as Eugene List, Abbey Simon, Jerome Lowenthal, Nancy Bachus and Thomas LaRatta. He holds a Master’s Degree from New York’s Juilliard School, where he was a scholarship student. With a repertoire of 80 concerti for piano and orchestra, Mr. Glover has appeared regularly with over twenty Bay Area orchestras, as well as numerous orchestras nationally and internationally. He recently recorded the world premiere recordings of Felix Borowski’s Piano Concerto in D minor and Beryl Rubinstein’s Concerto in C with the Lithuanian National Symphony in Vilnius, Lithuania. In December 2025, Mr. Glover recorded four sonatas for violin/viola and piano by Hugo Kauder. These world premiere recordings are on the Toccata Classics label. 

    In 2013, Mr. Glover gave the world premiere of the Piano Concerto by Lee Actor and recorded the work with the Slovak National Symphony in Bratislava, May 2014.  He has previously recorded ten solo CDs.