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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

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.

The 2024/25 season begins with a continuation of the Beethoven For Three touring and recording project with partners Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma which takes them to European festivals including BBC Proms, Dresden, Hamburg, Vienna and Luxembourg. As guest soloist he will appear during the New York Philharmonic’s opening week, 47 years after his debut with the orchestra. During the season he will return to the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, National, San Diego, Nashville and Pittsburgh symphonies and Rochester Philharmonic. A fall recital tour from Toronto and Boston moves west to include San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles culminating in the spring in Chicago and his annual Carnegie Hall appearance. A special project in duo with clarinetist Anthony McGill takes them from the west coast through the mid-west to Georgia and Carnegie Hall and in chamber music with Itzhak Perlman and Friends to Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Francisco. An extensive European tour will include concerts in Paris, Oslo, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Warsaw and Israel.

Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. 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.

AUGUST 2024