Garrick Ohlsson
Winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, Garrick Ohlsson commands an
enormous repertoire that includes some 80 concertos. His 2012-2013 season includes
performances of Busoni's Piano Concerto with the European Union Youth Orchestra; concerts
with the London Philharmonic followed by a monthlong tour in Australia, where he records
both Brahms concertos in performance; concerts with The Cleveland Orchestra in Florida;
Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; a Kennedy Center
appearance with the Iceland Symphony as part of the center's Nordic Festival; an East Coast
tour with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra; and return visits to the orchestras of Boston,
Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Houston, and Baltimore. Honoring the Franz Liszt
bicentenary, his 2011-2012 season included Liszt recitals in Chicago, Hong Kong, London,
and New York. A season earlier, marking the Chopin bicentenary, he presented a series of
all-Chopin recitals that culminated at Lincoln Center. In conjunction with that project, a
documentary, The Art of Chopin, was released in autumn 2010, followed by a DVD of
both Chopin concertos. Also an avid chamber musician, Mr. Ohlsson has collaborated with the
Cleveland, Emerson, Takács, and Tokyo string quartets. With violinist Jorja Fleezanis and
cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio. A
prolific recording artist, he can be heard on Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG,
Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, and Virgin Classics. A native of White Plains, New York,
Mr. Ohlsson began his piano studies at eight, attended the Westchester Conservatory of
Music, and entered The Juilliard School at 13. His distinguished teachers included, 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 Montreal Piano Competition, it was his winning of the Gold Medal at the 1970
International Chopin Competition in Warsaw that brought him worldwide recognition; he has
since made nearly a dozen tours of Poland. He was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994
and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor,
Michigan.