Shai Wosner has been described by The New York Times as "a superb pianist" and by The Financial Times as "an artist to follow keenly." He enjoys a growing reputation with audiences and critics alike, performing repertoire that ranges from Bach and Mozart to Ligeti and composers of his own generation.
Winner of a 2005 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2005 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, he was recently named a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist. Over the next two years, he will perform and record recital and chamber music repertoire and appear as soloist with the BBC orchestras, all of which will be broadcast over the BBC Radio 3 network in the UK and Europe.
Highlights of Mr. Wosner's current performing activities include his return to the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa with Pinchas Zukerman, and the Houston Symphony with Hans Graf; chamber music performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, at New York's Mostly Mozart Festival with Christian Tetzlaff, and at Berlin's Konzerthaus with Viviane Hagner. In the 2008-2009 season Mr. Wosner appears in recital throughout the U.S. and Europe, including London's Wigmore Hall, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and the 92nd Street Y in New York, as well as Miami, Scottsdale, St. Paul, Omaha, Hannover, and Perugia. Upcoming orchestral engagements include the Indianapolis Symphony, a return to the Atlanta Symphony with Donald Runnicles, the Fresno Philharmonic and North Carolina Symphony.
Wosner has performed with many major orchestras in the United States including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Houston, Milwaukee, Pacific and San Francisco; the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), among others. He has worked with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, James Conlon, Zubin Mehta, Leonard Slatkin, Peter Oundjian, Donald Runnicles, and Yan Pascal Tortelier.
Mr. Wosner gave his New York recital debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in February 2004 to critical acclaim. He has also given recitals in Chicago's Orchestra Hall, Vancouver, Toronto, Kalamazoo, and on Ravinia's "Rising Stars" series, and recently recorded works of Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin for the radio program "St. Paul Sunday".
Abroad, Mr. Wosner made his Vienna Philharmonic debut in Salzburg in January 2006 as part of the celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. He has also appeared with the Barcelona Symphony, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Gothenburg Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Symphony, the Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam, the Orchestre National de Belgique, and the Staatskapelle Berlin, among others. Wosner has also performed as soloist with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, led by Daniel Barenboim and attended the West-Eastern Divan workshop.
A sought-after chamber musician, Wosner recently toured in Europe with Christian Tetzlaff and fellow laureates of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. He regularly performs at various chamber music festivals, including Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, La Jolla's SummerFest and was a member of Lincoln's Center's Chamber Music Society Two. Other summer festival appearances include the Ravinia Festival, Hollywood Bowl, Grand Teton Music Festival, and Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. His chamber music engagements in the 2008-2009 season include a performance with members of the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall.
Performances of contemporary music are an important component of Mr. Wosner's activities. He has performed in new music frameworks at the Miller Theater in New York, at the University of California-Berkeley's Edge Festival, the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music and the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels, among others, where he performed György Ligeti's Piano Concerto.
Born in Israel in 1976, Wosner studied piano with Emanuel Krasovsky in Tel Aviv. In addition, he studied composition, theory, and improvisation with André Hajdu, with whom he has participated in various improvisation concerts and activities. His studies continued at the Juilliard School with Emanuel Ax.
