Jonathan Biss has appeared as soloist with the foremost orchestras of North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. An enthusiastic chamber musician and a frequent participant at the Marlboro Music Festival, Mr. Biss collaborates with many of today's finest players. This season he will appear with Midori, cellist Antoine Lederlin, and violist Nobuko Imai in chamber music performances for Carnegie Hall's Japan Festival and at the Kennedy Center. He also performs the complete cycle of Beethoven's ten sonatas for violin and piano with Miriam Fried in Seoul, Korea.
Mr. Biss's newest recording is an album of Schubert Sonatas in A Major, D. 959 and C Major, D. 840 and two short pieces by Kurtág on the Wigmore Hall Live label. Among his albums for EMI Classics are a live recording of Mozart's Piano Concertos Nos. 21 and 22 with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Schumann and Beethoven recital discs, which were recognized with a Diapason d'Or Award and an Edison Award, respectively.
Mr. Biss's other awards include the Leonard Bernstein Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the 2003 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award.
He studied at Indiana University with Evelyne Brancart and at the Curtis Institute of Music with Leon Fleisher. Mr. Biss joins the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 2011. He blogs about his life as a musician on his website.
Gary Graffman
Mr. Graffman has been a major figure in the music world since his debut with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of eighteen. For the next three decades he toured almost continuously, playing the most demanding works in the piano literature. His numerous recordings with the orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, and Chicago under such conductors as Bernstein, Ormandy, Szell, and Mehta include concertos by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Brahms, Chopin, and Beethoven; they are still regarded as touchstones. In 1979, however, an injury to his right hand limited Mr. Graffman's concertizing to the small body of repertoire for left hand alone. Since then seven new works have been commissioned for him, and he continues to have an active performing career. Mr. Graffman's association with the Curtis Institute of Music began in 1936, when he was accepted, at the age of seven, to study with Isabelle Vengerova. He graduated in 1946. In 1980, following his performance-reducing injury, he joined the Curtis piano faculty. From 1986 through May 2006, he served as director of Curtis, as well as president from 1995.
Mr. Lipkin received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1947, studying piano with Rudolf Serkin, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and David Saperton. In 1948 he won the Rachmaninoff Competition, as a pianist, and has since played with all of the major United States orchestras. He has earned particular acclaim for his Beethoven cycles, which have encompassed not only the thirty-two piano sonatas and five concertos, but the ten violin sonatas and five cello sonatas as well. His recording of the piano sonatas was released on the Newport Classic label in 2004. He recently performed a cycle of the major works of Schubert, including the complete piano sonatas; his recordings of these works were recently released on Newport Classic. Mr. Lipkin studied conducting at Tanglewood with Serge Koussevitzky and was apprentice conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell. He continued his conducting career at the New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic (assistant conductor, under Bernstein), Joffrey Ballet (music director), and Long Island Symphony (music director). He is artistic director of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in Blue Hill, Me., and served as artistic director of the International Piano Festival and William Kapell Competition at the University of Maryland. Visit his website at www.seymourlipkin.com. A member of the Juilliard faculty since 1986, Mr. Lipkin joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1969.
Meng-Chieh Liu
A recipient of the 2002 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Mr. Liu first made headlines in 1993 as a twenty-one-year-old student at the Curtis Institute of Music, when he substituted for André Watts at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia with three hours' notice. The concert earned high acclaim from critics and audience alike and was followed by a number of widely praised performances, including a recital at the Kennedy Center and a concert on the Philadelphia All-Star Series. A dedicated chamber musician, as well as a solo artist, he has collaborated with musicians in North America, Europe, and Asia, in addition to working with artists in other disciplines, including Mikhail Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Project. Mr. Liu received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Jorge Bolet, Eleanor Sokoloff, and Claude Frank. He received the 2002 Philadelphia Musical Fund Society Career Advancement Award and first prizes in the Stravinsky, Asia Pacific Piano, and Mieczyslaw Munz competitions. Mr. Liu has been on the faculty of Roosevelt University since 2006 and joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1993.
Robert McDonald
Mr. McDonald tours extensively as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America. He has appeared with major orchestras in the United States and was the recital partner for many years to Isaac Stern and other distinguished instrumentalists. He has played with the Takács, Vermeer, Juilliard, Brentano, Borromeo, American, Shanghai, and St. Lawrence string quartets, as well as Music from Marlboro. His discography includes recordings for Sony Classical, Bridge, Vox, Musical Heritage Society, ASV, and CRI. Mr. McDonald's prizes include the gold medal at the Busoni International Piano Competition, the top prize at the William Kapell International Competition, and the Deutsche Schallplatten Critics Award. With degrees from Lawrence University, the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, and the Manhattan School of Music, he studied with Theodore Rehl, Seymour Lipkin, Rudolf Serkin, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Beveridge Webster, and Gary Graffman. A member of the piano faculty at Juilliard since 1999, Mr. McDonald joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 2007.
Eleanor Sokoloff
Mrs. Sokoloff began her studies with Ruth Edwards at the Cleveland Institute of Music (Ernest Bloch, director) and was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in 1931, studying piano with David Saperton, chamber music with Dr. Louis Bailly, and--along with her late husband, Vladimir--the two-piano repertoire with Vera Brodsky and Harold Triggs. More than seventy-five of Mrs. Sokoloff's students have been chosen to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Mrs. Sokoloff joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1936, and, in recognition of her lengthy tenure, received the Curtis Alumni Award in 2001.
Ignat Solzhenitsyn
Enjoying an active career as both pianist and conductor, Mr. Solzhenitsyn has won critical acclaim throughout the world for his lyrical and poignant interpretations. In recent seasons, his extensive touring schedule in the United States and Europe has included concerto performances with numerous major orchestras--including those of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Montreal, London, Paris, and St. Petersburg--and collaborations with distinguished conductors such as Blomstedt, Dutoit, Previn, Sawallisch, and Schwarz. Mr. Solzhenitsyn has given many recitals in the United States and in major musical centers of Europe and the Far East. Mr. Solzhenitsyn is music director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. A 1994 winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, he has been featured on numerous radio and television specials. Mr. Solzhenitsyn joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 2004.
