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left to right: Gloria Cheng, Mark Robson,
Susan Svrcek, Vicki Ray seated: our founder, Leonard Stein
Photo Credit: florencephotography.com


GLORIA CHENG

Pianist GLORIA CHENG is widely recognized as one of today's foremost interpreters of contemporary music. She has premiered dozens of new compositions including works composed specifically for her by John Adams, Mark Applebaum, Pierre Boulez, Don Davis, Joan Huang, Terry Riley, Stephen Andrew Taylor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Andrew Waggoner. Of the world premiere of Salonen's Dichotomie, the Los Angeles Times described her performance as "miraculous in the sheer speed and sureness of her fingers, in the rich depth of color and sonority she obtained from the piano, and in the sheer expression of joy she brought to a demanding new work." Gramophone has described her as "technically fearless," and the New York Times has praised her "impressive fluency and power."

In addition to acclaimed performances of the established repertoire, Ms. Cheng's passionate dedication to contemporary music has brought about close collaborations with Thomas Adès, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, John Harbison, György Ligeti, Magnus Lindberg, Witold Lutoslawski, and Steven Stucky. She is favored by some of the world's most demanding composer/conductors, including Pierre Boulez, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Oliver Knussen.

In May, 2003, Ms. Cheng was the soloist in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's historic final concerts at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, playing Messiaen's Oiseaux exotiques under Pierre Boulez. Other recent engagements include appearances at the Pacific Symphony's American Composers Festival, Chicago Humanities Festival, Los Angeles Philharmonic Minimalism Festival and Green Umbrella series, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, John Adams' Century Rolls with the Long Beach Symphony, Stravinsky's Petrouchka with the New York Philharmonic, Lou Harrison's Piano Concerto with the Indianapolis Symphony, and her annual recital on the Los Angeles-based Piano Spheres series. Other projects have brought Ms. Cheng to festivals at Ojai, Tanglewood, Aspen, Other Minds, and Kuhmo (Finland), as well as to venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Théâtre du Châtelet.

Ms. Cheng's solo discs include music by Messiaen on Koch and Piano Music of John Adams and Terry Riley on Telarc. Her second Telarc release, Piano Dance: A 20th-Century Portrait, was selected as Instrumental Pick of the Month by the editors of BBC Music Magazine. Ms Cheng, who holds a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and graduate degrees in Music from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California, is on the faculty at UCLA.




VICKI RAY

Pianist Vicki Ray performs widely as a soloist and collaborative artist. She is a member of the award winning California E.A.R. Unit and Xtet. As a founding member of Piano Spheres, an acclaimed solo piano series dedicated to exploring the less familiar realms of the piano repertoire, her playing has been hailed by the Los Angeles Times for "displaying that kind of musical thoroughness and technical panache that puts a composer's thoughts directly before the listener." A long-time champion of new music Ms. Ray has had works written for her by composers John Adams, Paul Dresher, Stephen Hartke, Shaun Naidoo, Donald Crockett, Arthur Jarvinen, Janice Giteck and many others.

In 1989 she was the first place winner in the National Association of Composers USA competition for performers of contemporary music. Ms.Ray has been featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the German ensemble Compania and the Blue Rider Ensemble of Toronto with whom she made the first Canadian recording of Pierrot Lunaire. She has played on various national and international festivals including the Salzburg Festival, the Berlin 750 Jahre Festival and the Ojai Festival where she premiered a new concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle.

Her solo recording from the left edge, a collection of works written for her by composers living in California can be found on the CRI label. As a pianist who excels in a wide range of styles Ms.Ray's numerous recordings cover everything from the semi-improvised structures of Leo Wadada Smith to the twisted groove base of John Adams' Road Movies, from the elegant serialism of Mel Powell to the austere beauty of Morton Feldman's Crippled Symmetries.

Ms. Ray is head of the piano department at the California Institute of the Arts where she has been a faculty member since 1991.




MARK ROBSON

Mark Robson began his musical pursuits at an early age, first as a pianist and later as a flutist and organist. He began to compose when he was nine. Subsequent studies culminated in degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Southern California, enhanced by several years of study of piano and Ondes Martenot in Paris. Among his teachers have been Lydia Frumkin, Yvonne Loriod, Alain Motard, John Perry and James Bonn. His talent has been recognized with several scholarships and awards; these include a prize in the International Piano Competition for Contemporary Music of St. Germain-en-Laye, the Corvina Cultural Circle Honorary Hungarian Award and the USC Master's student Keyboard Departmental Award.

From January 1991 until June 2005, Mr. Robson worked on the music staff of the Los Angeles Opera as a repetiteur and eventually as Assistant Chorus Master/Assistant Conductor. He often provided recitative accompaniment at the harpsichord for their productions and performed onstage in the role of virtuoso Boleslao Lazinski in Fedora. As a conductor he has appeared occasionally with the Brentwood-Westwood Symphony Orchestra and has assisted at the renowned festivals in Salzburg and Spoleto (Italy). He is a founding member of Piano Spheres, a collective of five pianists that have been presenting new and unfamiliar keyboard works in the Los Angeles area since 1994. His playing has been hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "massively virtuosic" and noted for its "display of dazzling speed, exquisite control and surprising delicacy". Recital appearances have included concerts at the Salle Marguerite Gaveau and Salle Cortot in Paris, the Paleis Het Loo in the Netherlands, the L.A. County Art Museum series Sundays-at-Four, the Kennedy Center, James Madison University (VA) and the Spoleto Festival.

As a composer, Mr. Robson has been programmed on concerts in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Barcelona and Paris. The Brentwood-Westwood Symphony Orchestra has premiered two of his orchestral works, "Apollo Rising" and "Christmas Suite". Other works include a trio for piano, cello and clarinet entitled "Dances and Dirges," works commissioned for the synagogue, a piano cycle "24 Preludes for the Left Hand", the melodrama "Initiation" for speaker, piano and percussion, a "Trio for Three Bassoons" and several song cycles. One of these, "A Child of Air", has been recorded by soprano Patricia Prunty (accompanied by the composer) and performed several times in New York, Los Angeles, Minnesota and at the winter Ravinia Festival. In 1995, Mr Robson was composer-in-residence for the L.A. Arts-in-the-Park series in Pasadena, CA and since 2000 has been a member of ASCAP.




LEONARD STEIN

Leonard Stein is a pianist's thinking-man. His dedication to music's long historical adventure has influenced students, scholars and audiences with a knowledge of the past and an illumination of the present. He has championed new music for more than sixty years in Los Angeles and abroad. His main influences were his piano teacher, Richard Buhlig, who gave the first performance in Berlin of Schoenberg's Op. 11 Piano Pieces, which he taught to Stein and, of course, Arnold Schoenberg himself, with whom Stein studied from 1935 until 1939 at USC and UCLA. Subsequently, Stein became Schoenberg's assistant at UCLA and helped him write texts on harmony, counterpoint and composition. In 1975 Stein was appointed founding director of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC, a position he held until 1991. He edited STYLE AND IDEA SELECTED WRITINGS OF ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, published in 1975. Stein founded Piano Spheres with four other pianists in 1994 and remained its Artistic Director until his death, June 24, 20004.



SUSAN SVRCEK

Pianist SUSAN SVRCEK has established a versatile career that encompasses critically acclaimed solo, chamber, and orchestral appearances. A winner of the Concert Artists' Guild International Competition in New York, she made her debut in Carnegie's Weill Hall. She has also had solo engagements from the Boston Museum of Fine Art to Tokyo's Zero Hall, Art Hall in Seoul, and numerous venues in Southern California, including Pasadena's Ambassador Auditorium. She has been soloist with the Pasadena and Long Beach Symphonies, among others, and has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group. She has been a featured artist on National Public Radio, Bavarian National Radio, and NHK Radio (Japan).

As a founding member of Piano Spheres, Susan Svrcek has premiered works by Joan Huang, Benjamin Lees, Frederick Lesemann, and Hyo-shin Na. She is noted for her wide range of repertoire, from Mozart and Beethoven to Xenakis and Boulez. She has achieved mastery in her performances, as noted in the Los Angeles Times, "because she has probed so carefully into, and brought so many facets out of the massive repertory for the solo piano, one comes to her recitals with high expectations, new thrills, rediscovered gems, unknown masterpieces."

Ms. Svrcek is in demand to give master classes throughout California, as well as in Japan and Korea. In the past, she has served on the piano faculties of Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University, and Cal State Fullerton. Currently, she coaches chamber music at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music. Ms. Svrcek has recorded for CRI, Cambria, and ORFEO. She holds two degrees from CalArts, a master's degree from Yale University, and a doctorate from the University of Southern California.




Guest Artists


URSULA OPPENS

Ursula Oppens is one of the few pianists before the public today who has won equal renown as an interpreter of the established repertoire and a champion of contemporary music. Her performances of music old and new are marked by a powerful grasp of the composer's musical intentions and an equally sure command of the keyboard's resources; qualities placing her in the ranks of the world's foremost interpreters.

In the 2007/08 season, Ms. Oppens, a friend and colleague of Elliott Carter, celebrates his 100th Birthday with performances of his complete music of solo piano at New York City's Symphony Space. In other 07/08 highlights, Ms. Oppens performed the world premiere of William Bolcolm's "Ballade" at the newly re-opened Merkin Hall; and is featured at the Los Angeles Philharmonic's renowned Green Umbrella Festival on March 25, performing Elliott Carter's "Dialogues" and the world premiere of Harold Meltzer's new piano concerto.

Ms. Oppens has performed with virtually all of the world's major orchestras. In previous seasons she has been heard with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, and the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Milwaukee. Abroad, she has appeared with such orchestras as the Berlin Symphony, Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, the Deutsche Symphonie, the Scottish BBC and the London Philharmonic Orchestras. She has also played at the Aspen, Tanglewood, Santa Fe, Edinburgh, Bath and Holland Festivals, among others.

An enduring commitment to integrating new music into regular concert life has led Ms. Oppens to commission and premiere many compositions, including works by Anthony Braxton, Elliott Carter, Anthony Davis, John Harbison, Julius Hemphill, Tania Leon, György Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Conlon Nancarrow, Tobias Picker, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Singleton, Joan Tower, Lois V Vierk, Christian Wolff, Amnon Wolman, and Charles Wuorinen.

A co-founder of Speculum Musicae, Ms. Oppens has an extensive recording catalogue and can be heard on Angel, Arista, Audivis, BMG, Bridge, CBS Masterworks, CP2, CRI, De Note, Koch International Classics, Music and Arts, Vanguard, New Albion, New World, Nonesuch, and Watt Works. She received two Grammy nominations: for her Vanguard recording of Frederic Rzewski's "The People United Will Never Be Defeated," and for "American Piano Music of Our Time," a classic compilation of piano works by 20th century American composers for the Music & Arts label. The latter was also named in John Rockwell's "Best of the Year" survey for The New York Times, along with her recording for New World Records of Elliott Carter's Piano Concerto. Ms. Oppens's recent releases include a disc of chamber music by Elliott Carter with the Arditti Quartet on the Audivis label and Charles Wuorinen's Piano Quintet on Koch International Classics. Other recordings include Joan Tower's Piano Concerto on De Note Records; Rzewski's "Night Crossing with Fishermen" and a disc of Schoenberg's vocal music with soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson, both for Music and Arts; and the Brahms Viola Sonatas with Barbara Westphal on Bridge Records.

Throughout her career Ms. Oppens has played at many of the world's major festivals, including those in Aspen, Tanglewood, Santa Fe, Ojai, Music Academy of the West, Edinburgh, Bonn, Cabrillo, Stresa, Bath, Bergamo, Brescia, Japan, and the Holland Festival. She has also been heard in recital and concerto performances at many European music centers, including the South Bank Center and the BBC Broadcasting House in London, the Vienna Radio Orchestra, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, and in Stockholm, Brussels, Geneva, and Bonn.

Ursula Oppens studied piano with her mother, the late Edith Oppens, as well as with Leonard Shure and Guido Agosti. She received her master's degree at The Juilliard School, where she studied with Felix Galimir and Rosina Lhévinne. As an undergraduate at Radcliffe College, she studied English literature and economics. A native New Yorker, Ms. Oppens made her New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1969 under the auspices of Young Concert Artists. She won first prize in the Busoni International Piano Competition that same year, and was awarded the loma d'onore the Accademia Chigiana in 1970. In 1976 she won an Avery Fisher Career Grant, which led to a performance with the New York Philharmonic. Ms. Oppens, who was appointed John Evans Distinguished Professor of Music at Northwestern University in 1994, divides her time between Evanston, IL and New York City.

(January 2008. Please discard any undated or previously dated materials.)




JOANNE PEARCE MARTIN

Currently enjoying her 7th season as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Principal Keyboardist, JOANNE PEARCE MARTIN performs with the orchestra on multiple keyboard instruments including the celesta, various synthesizers, and occasionally a Mac computer, in addition to the ubiquitous piano. Born in Allentown, PA, Ms. Martin performs all over the world as soloist, chamber musician, and recording artist. With the L.A. Phil., she has made numerous solo appearances on piano, harpsichord, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ, appearing with such conductors as Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. She is also a frequent soloist with the LA Phil during the summer Hollywood Bowl seasons. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, she has been guest soloist with many other orchestras in the U.S and abroad, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, L.A. Chamber Orchestra, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Florida West Coast Symphony, and England's Huddersfield Philharmonic. In great demand as a collaborative artist, she has performed with such artists as Joshua Bell, Lynn Harrell, Iona Brown, James Galway, Jean-Pierre Rampal, & Joseph Silverstein, among others.

Ms. Martin has performed at dozens of summer music festivals and concert series spanning four continents, including those in Aspen, Sarasota, Park City, Utah, New York's 92nd St. Y, Carnegie Recital Hall, Lincoln Center Library, Kennedy Center, Costa Rica, Australia, Taiwan, Edinburgh, Cologne, and Nice. Southern California audiences have followed her performances of New Music and "standards" for years with the L.A. Phil's Green Umbrella and Chamber Music Series, Camerata Pacifica, Pacific Serenades, Dilijan, South Bay Chamber Music Society, Strawberry Creek, Ojai, Mainly Mozart, and San Louis Obispo Mozart Festivals.

This season Joanne and her husband Gavin Martin have continued to concertize together as a 2-piano team. She has also performed multiple-piano works with Emmanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Helene Grimaud, and Jeffrey Kahane. Her playing has been described by the Los Angeles Times as possessing "unusual fervor and fluency." She has performed on all the major U.S. television networks and recorded commercially for Centaur, Summit, and Albany records, as well as the Yamaha Disklavier Piano. Ms. Martin has also been the subject of a half-hour feature on The Learning Channel. Her latest recording project, a solo CD entitled "Joanne Pearce Martin, Barefoot", will be released in Spring 2008 on Yarlung Records. Ms. Martin's playing of Beethoven's Triple Concerto can be heard on DreamWork's upcoming movie release "The Soloist", starring Jamie Foxx. Her newest and certainly freshest musical adventure is learning to play the Theremin - she is now the proud owner of a Moog "Etherwave Pro".

When she's not making music, you might find Joanne up in the air - she is an instrument-rated airplane pilot and master-rated skydiver


THOMAS ADèS

Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music, and read music at King's College, Cambridge. Between 1993 and 1995 he was Composer in Association with the Hallé Orchestra, which association resulted in The Origin of the Harp (1994), and These Premises Are Alarmed for the opening of the Bridgewater Hall in 1996. Asyla (1997) was a Feeney Trust commission for Sir Simon Rattle and the CBSO, who toured it together, and repeated it at Symphony Hall in August 1998 Rattle's last concert as Music Director of the orchestra. Rattle subsequently programmed Asyla in his opening concert with the Berlin Philharmonic as Music Director in September 2002 - an occasion which was recorded on DVD and broadcast on international television. Asyla has since had nearly 100 performances worldwide.

Adès' first opera, Powder Her Face (commissioned by Almeida Opera for the Cheltenham Festival in 1995), has been performed all round the world, has been televised by Channel Four, and is available on an EMI CD. Most of the composer's music has been recorded by EMI, with whom Adès has an exclusive contract as composer, pianist and conductor. Adès' second opera, The Tempest, was commissioned by the Royal Opera House and was premiered there under the baton of the composer to great critical acclaim in February 2004.

Thomas Adès music has attracted numerous awards and prizes, including the Paris Rostrum for the best piece by a composer under 30 (1994); the 1997 Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Asyla; the Elise L Stoeger Prize for Arcadiana (New York, 1998); the Salzburg Easter Festival Prize (1999); the Munich Ernst von Siemens Prize for Young Composers (1999); the 2000 Grawemeyer Award for Asyla (the largest international prize for composition, here awarded to the youngest recipient); and the Hindemith Prize (2001). The Asyla EMI CD won a coveted Mercury Music Prize and was the only classical album to be shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize Record of the Year.


AMY DISSANAYAKE

Though her repertoire ranges from Baroque to contemporary, Amy Dissanayake is especially committed to performing music of living composers. She has premièred many solo and chamber works, and has worked with such composers as Pierre Boulez, Esa-Pekka Salonen, George Crumb, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan Tower, David Lang, Simon Bainbridge, John Adams, Marta Ptazsynska, Tania Léon, and David Rakowski. Her recordings of volumes 1 and 2 of David Rakowski's Piano Etudes on Bridge Records have received much critical acclaim. She is a featured soloist and chamber musician on the Chicago Symphony's 2005 MusicNOW series, and has performed with the Chicago Contemporary Players, Chicago Pro Musica, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, Klang, and the Empyrean Ensemble. The Chicago Tribune has called her "extraordinary" in her "mastery of what lay on the dense, printed page and beyond"; and the Chicago Sun Times called her a "ferociously talented pianist." Of her Rakowski disc, Classics Today says, "Dissanayake does a splendid job projecting the music's wit, and her unflappable virtuosity makes even the densest writing sound effortless... a marvelous disc that piano fanciers should snap up without hesitation."

Amy Dissanayake has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. Her selection in 1993 as a United States Artistic Ambassador led to a highly acclaimed concert tour of eight countries in Africa and South Asia, where she gave solo recitals, lectures, and master-classes as part of a broad-based cultural exchange program sponsored by the United States Information Agency. Ms. Dissanayake served as the principal pianist of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for six years, and has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as an extra keyboardist. Awards include a stipend prize at the 2000 Darmstadt Internationale Fereinkurse für Neue Musik, first prizes in the American Opera Society of Chicago competition, the Union League and Civic Arts Foundation piano competition, the Farwell Competition, and the Rose Fay Thomas Competition, which led to a solo performance in Orchestra Hall, Chicago. Ms. Dissanayake has also been a prizewinner in the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition and the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition.

Amy Dissanayake has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, New Hampshire Philharmonic, and the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka, and her live and recorded performances have been featured on radio stations around the United States and in Europe. Recent performances include the Rock Hotel Piano Festival in New York City, the June in Buffalo Festival, the Rotterdam Music Biennial in The Netherlands, and solo recitals in the People's Republic of China. Upcoming engagements include a solo recording of new tangos for piano, chamber music recordings of Conlon Nancarrow and Erik Oña for Wergo records at the WDR radio studios in Köln, Germany, performances at the Universities of California at Santa Barbara and Davis, a world première of Jeffrey Mumford's new piano quintet with the world-renowned Pacifica Quartet, solo performances in New York, Chicago (on the MusicNOW series), and North Carolina, and a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. Ms. Dissanayake studied with Ursula Oppens at Northwestern University, where she earned a Doctorate in Piano Performance in 1999.


THOMAS SCHULTZ

Thomas Schultz has established an international reputation both as an interpreter of music from the classical tradition – particularly Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt – and as one of the leading exponents of the music of our time. Among his recent engagements are solo recitals in New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Ghent, Seoul and Kyoto, and at the Schoenberg Festival in Vienna, Korea’s Tongyoung Festival, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento and April in Santa Cruz Festival. He has also appeared as a soloist at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, and in chamber music performances with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Da Camera Society of Houston, Robert Craft’s 20th Century Classics Ensemble and the St. Lawrence String Quartet.

His recitals are notable for programming that celebrates the continuing vitality of the piano repertoire, by juxtaposing the old and the new (Schubert’s B flat Sonata with Rzewski’s The People United Will Never be Defeated, Bach’s Goldberg Variations with recent music by Asian composers) and by focusing on new works (piano music from the Pacific Rim, recent Russian piano music and programs dedicated to the works of Cage and Rzewski). He has worked closely with such eminent composers as Cage, Feldman, Wolff, Rzewski, Earle Brown, Jonathan Harvey and Elliott Carter (in performances of the Double Concerto at the Colorado Music Festival and at Alice Tully Hall in New York).

Since 2002, Schultz has included in his recitals works written especially for him by Frederic Rzewski, Christian Wolff, Hyo-shin Na, Walter Zimmermann, Boudewijn Buckinx and Yuji Takahashi.

His recording of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Solo Pianosis on the MusicMasters label; he can be heard in chamber works of Earle Brown on a Newport Classics recording and his recordings of works by the Korean composer Hyo-shin Na on CDs from the Seoul and TopArt labels have received special recognition. His recent solo CD, with the Goldberg Variations of Bach and Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated, is on the Wooden Fish label.

Schultz’s musical studies were with John Perry, Leonard Stein and Philip Lillestol. He has been a member of the piano faculty at Stanford University since 1994.

"This was a fine undertaking, equally impressive for its thoughtful planning and for its strong, fearless execution. Schultz brought a depth of feeling to the music that gave even the splashiest passages an undercurrent of soulfulness. To dispatch Rzewski's extraordinary masterwork with the sort of fiery elegance and formal command that Schultz brought to the piece is another order of achievement entirely."

Joshua Kosman, The San Francisco Chronicle
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"A sensation... a stunning program... these were sterling performances of quality scores written between 1919 and the present. Schultz is the master of an enviable keyboard technique that is nourished by an incisive intellect. He' s an impressive artist who makes clear that technique alone does not lead to a satisfactory performance of contemporary music; the instinctive musicality that Schultz brings to his work is equally important."
Wes Blomster, The Boulder Daily Camera

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LIAM VINEY

Australian pianist Liam Viney is active as a soloist, collaborative artist and teacher. Having performed widely in Australia, he is now based in Los Angeles where he serves on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts, teaching piano, chamber music and music theory.

Liam has appeared as soloist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, the Queensland Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra, the Queensland Youth Orchestra, the Hartford Symphony, and the CalArts Chamber Orchestra in concertos ranging from those of Mozart to Ligeti. He has given solo recitals in the U.S. and Australia in concert series and festivals including the New Paths festival of New York, the Keynote, Celebrations, and Kawai series, and the Tyalgum Festival. He also recorded solo programs for ABC FM radio's Young Australia program and 4MBS radio station.

Liam's affinity for new music has led to performances with groups such as Australia's Elision Ensemble, the U.S.-based Inauthentica, and the California E.A.R Unit. He was featured in collaboration with pianist Michael Kieran Harvey in performances of Stockhausen's Mantra at Melbourne's Next Wave festival, and the Brisbane Festival. Liam also had the honour of giving the Australian premiere of Peter Sculthorpe's Simori at the opening ceremony of the Queensland Conservatorium's new campus in 1998.

Liam has won competitions in both Australia and the U.S., including First Prize in the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition, where he also won the People's Choice Prize and prizes for Best performance of an Australian Work, and Best Performance of a Classical Sonata. The Courier Mail's review of the competition's final stage with orchestra described his playing as having "maturity and flair". Liam also won First Prize in the Yamaha Australian Youth Piano Competition, (the prize for which was a grand piano), the City of Sydney Piano Scholarship, the Queensland Piano Competition on two occasions, and the Connecticut Young Artists Piano Competition.

Liam earned a Masters of Music and a Master of Musical Arts at Yale University, where he studied with Boris Berman. During his academic career he won the prize for Most Outstanding Pianist and was awarded the position of Teaching Fellow, instructing Yale undergraduates in piano and music theory. Liam's other teachers have included Alison Waddell, Stephen Savage and Natasha Vlassenko at the Queensland Conservatorium which he attended on a Griffith University Scholarship, earning First-Class Honours and the University Medal.


CHRISTOPHER O'RILEY

From his groundbreaking transcriptions of Radiohead to his powerful interpretations of repertoire classic and contemporary, pianist Christopher O'Riley has redefined the possibilities of classical music. He has taken his unique vision to both traditional classical music venues and symphonic settings, as well as to entirely new audiences on the radio, at universities and even clubs. As host of the most popular classical music radio show on the air today, National Public Radio's From the Top, Mr. O'Riley works and performs with the next generation of brilliant young musicians, demonstrating to audiences, with humor and a lack of pretense, that these young artists are as characterful and diverse in their personal lives as they are in their music-making. In 2007 From the Top was filmed for public television in Zankel Concert Hall at Carnegie Hall and debuted on PBS in the spring.

An interpreter and arranger of some of the most important contemporary popular music of our time, O'Riley lives by the Duke Ellington adage, "there are only two kinds of music, good music and bad." His first recording of Radiohead transcriptions, "True Love Waits" (Sony/Odyssey) received 4 stars from Rolling Stone and was as critically acclaimed as it was commercially successful. His second set of music from the British alt-pop outfit, entitled "Hold Me to This: Christopher O'Riley plays the music of Radiohead," was released on World Village/Harmonia Mundi to a similarly enthusiastic response. In April 2006, his third set of transcriptions was released on the same label. Entitled "Home to Oblivion; An Elliott Smith Tribute," Mr. O'Riley this time tackles the deeply emotional and complex work from the troubled singer/songwriter who died prematurely in 2003. His most recent recording, released in April 2007 and entitled "Second Grace: The Music of Nick Drake," is a disc of transcriptions of the music of the British folk singer. Nick Drake died in 1974 after releasing just 3 albums, yet influenced two generations of songwriters in his wake.

Just as his radio show and his contemporary classical recordings have created extraordinary buzz, so have his performances in traditional classical context. In November 2004, Mr. O'Riley toured the U.S. with the world-famous Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Orchestra visiting 10 cities in 2 weeks, playing Bach, Mozart and Liszt concerti. He has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the Minnesota Orchestra, the symphonies of Pittsburgh, Detroit, Colorado, Atlanta and Baltimore. The illustrious group of conductors with whom he has collaborated includes Marin Alsop, David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, John Williams, NeemeJärvi, Bobby McFerrin, Hans Graf, Yoel Levi, Hugh Wolff and Andrew Litton. Performances in the 2007-2008 season include appearances with the Ravinia Festival, Virginia Symphony, Stanford Lively Arts, and the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.

An enthusiastic advocate of new music, Mr. O'Riley has twice participated in the annual "Absolute Concerto" concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, a brainchild of O'Riley's fan in the 80's, Andy Warhol, premiering works by Richard Danielpour and Michael Torke. In 1999-2000 he performed Michael Daugherty's "Le Tombeau de Liberace" with the Detroit Symphony and with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, both in St. Paul and on tour. He has also recently given premieres of works by Aaron Jay Kernis, including his piano quartet, "Still Movement with Hymn," (also recorded for Decca's Argo label) and the "Superstar" Etude No. 1, inspired by the pianism of Jerry Lee Lewis.

From early in his career, Mr. O'Riley was honored with many awards at the Leeds, Van Cliburn, Busoni and Montreal competitions, as well as an Avery Fisher Career Grant. He was also a finalist at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1981. Among his many solo releases are a Scriabin disc for Image Recordings and an all-Stravinsky disc on Elektra Nonesuch, featuring "Three Movements from Petrouchka" and Mr. O'Riley's first foray into transcriptions with his own versions of "Apollo" and "Histoire du Soldat." Other recordings include an RCA Victor Red Seal release of French repertoire for flute and piano with James Galway; his audacious debut disc of music of Busoni including the monumental 'Fantasia Contrapuntistica', a disc of Ravel's solo works; a recording of Beethoven Piano Sonatas; a collaboration with cellist Carter Brey entitled "Le Grand Tango"; and the premiere recording of P.D.Q Bach's "The Short-Tempered Clavier" by the fabled composer-satirist Peter Schickele. Other contemporary composers he has recorded include Richard Danielpour, Robert Helps, Todd Brief, Roger Sessions and John Adams.

In addition to his own transcriptions, Mr. O'Riley has ventured into alternate territory on tour with other classical artists. He has developed programs with fellow pianists: "Heard Fresh: Music for Two Pianos," with the jazz pianist Fred Hersch; and "Los Tangueros," with the Argentinian pianist Pablo Ziegler, a program of two-piano arrangements that feature Astor Piazzolla's classic tangos. In 1999 he collaborated with choreographer and director Martha Clarke, who staged several stories of Anton Chekhov set to the piano works of Alexander Scriabin, performed live on stage by Mr. O'Riley. This production, titled "Vers la Flamme," toured Europe and the United States, and was presented by Jacob's Pillow, Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center, among others.

As Mr. O'Riley continues to create new directions in which to take the solo piano recital, the demand for his work internationally has continued to grow. He has performed his transcriptions at major jazz festivals in Istanbul, London, San Francisco and Sicily as well as on a tour of the U.K. He recently appeared at the Belfast Festival and he debuted in Australia at the 2006 Sydney Festival.

O'Riley studied with Russell Sherman at the New England Conservatory of Music. Christopher O'Riley splits his time between Los Angeles and rural Ohio. His radio show can be found on-line at www.fromthetop.org. His personal website is at www.christopheroriley.com.

LAST UPDATED June 2007.



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