Garrick Ohlsson: Bio 2020

Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. In the 2018/19 season he launched an ambitious project spread over two seasons exploring the complete solo piano works of Brahms in four different programs. The cycle is unfolding in New York and several other cities across North America. In concerto repertoire ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Brahms and Barber, he will return in the 2019/20 season to the Nashville, Oregon, Dallas, Detroit and Colorado Symphonies, as well as orchestras in Seoul, Helsinki, Zagreb, Tallinn, Manchester and London.

An avid chamber musician, Mr. Ohlsson has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tokyo and Takács string quartets, including most recently Boston Chamber Players on tour in Europe. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio. Passionate about singing and singers, Mr. Ohlsson has appeared in recital with such legendary artists as Magda Olivero, Jessye Norman, and Ewa Podleś.

Mr. Ohlsson’s ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven Sonatas, for Bridge Records, has garnered critical acclaim, including a Grammy award for Vol. 3. In fall 2008, Hyperion re-released his 16-disc set of the Complete Works of Chopin followed in 2010 by all the Brahms piano variations. Most recently on that label are Scriabin's Complete Poèmes, Smetana Czech Dances, and ètudes by Debussy, Bartók and Prokofiev.

A native of White Plains, Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8; at 13 he entered The Juilliard School. His musical development has been influenced by a succession of distinguished teachers, most notably Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne and Irma Wolpe. Although he won First Prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and the 1968 Montréal Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the Gold Medal (and remains the single American to have done so), that brought him worldwide recognition as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Mr. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, MI. In August 2018, the Polish Deputy Culture Minister awarded him with the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for cultural merit. He is a Steinway Artist and makes his home in San Francisco.