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Photo by Nigel Parry
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Live at Celebrity Series of Boston. Photo by Robert Torres.
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Photo by Nigel Parry
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Photo by Nigel Parry
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Photo by Nigel Parry
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Live at Celebrity Series of Boston. Photo by Robert Torres.
Impromptu Op. 142 No. 2 on “Live from Here”
Brahms Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major – Movement I (excerpt)
Living the Classical Life: Episode 56, Emanuel Ax
Pre-Concert Coffee with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Emanuel Ax

“Ax’s playing is always marvelously articulate and totally unfussy. Nothing is done for effect or to draw attention to the player rather than to what he is playing; though his range of touch and keyboard colour is consummately wide, it is never used cosmetically. “

The Guardian

“His greatness, his overwhelming authority as musician, technician and probing intellect emerges quickly as he plays. Within minutes, we are totally captured by his intensity and pianistic achievement.”

Los Angeles Times

“Mr Ax…played with youthful brio, incisive rhythm, bountiful imagination, delicacy when called for and thundering power when the piano fought back.”

The New York Times

“Ax is an extremely satisfying pianist; he is at home in a wide variety of music and his pianism is always thoughtful, lyrical, lustrous.”

The Washington Post

“Ax, whose mastery of the standard canon is a given, looked and sounded perfectly at home in this jazz-inflected fare. The pianist drew a mosaic of colors and characters from his part, playing with voicings that were ever clean, clear, and well-balanced. His navigation of the music’s repeated figures and runs were spiffily on-point as was his command of the concerto’s several improvisatory-like episodes, particularly in the first movement.”

Boston Classical Review

Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize. Emanuel Ax was recently named the 2026 Musical America Artist of the Year.

As Artist in Residence for the 2026/2027 season with Radio France, the season begins with a European tour with performances in Munich, Paris, and Amsterdam. Upon returning to North America, Ax will embark on a series of concerts with The Knights with the final performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. An avid collaborator, Mr. Ax’s season will also include chamber music with long-term musical colleagues and friends, Yo-Yo Ma (in Hartford, Philadelphia, East Lansing, Ann Arbor, Chappel Hill and Winona) and Itzhak Perlman (in Philadelphia, Akron, and Detroit). He will return to North American orchestras in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Lincoln, Irvine, Portland, Seattle, Sarasota, Mobile, and New Albany. In recital he can be heard in Omaha, Palm Beach, New Orleans, Ridgefield, La Jolla, San Francisco, Schenectady, Rochester, and at Carnegie Hall. An extensive European tour will include concerts in London, Oslo, Madrid, Dresden, Prague, Monte Carlo, and Milan.

Three years in the making, Joseph Levy’s “All the Music in the World”, a documentary film following Mr. Ax on tour including interviews with his many artistic partners will be premiered at DOC NYC this fall.

“Classical Music Happy Hour”, the podcast launched by WQXR NY in 2026 hosted by “Manny” Ax received such acclaim that a new season is in preparation for 2027.

Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first four discs have been released with the fifth arriving this fall. He has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMY-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).

Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University.

2026-2027