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- - Christopher Taylor's Biography -
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The
past few years have seen Christopher Taylor emerge as one of
the nation’s
foremost musicians. Audiences and critics
alike hail the intensity and artistry he
brings to the works
of masters ranging from Bach and Beethoven to Boulez and
Bolcom;
the Washington Post, for instance, deems Mr. Taylor “one
of the most
impressive young pianists on the horizon today,” and
the New York Times termed
a recent performance “astonishing.”
Numerous
awards have confirmed Mr. Taylor’s high standing
in the musical world.
He was named an American Pianists’ Association
Fellow for 2000, before which he
received an Avery Fischer
Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993
Van Cliburn
International Piano Competition, where he was the first American
to
receive such high recognition in twelve years. In 1990 he
took first prize in the
William Kapell International Piano
Competition, and also became one of the first
recipients of
the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.
In recent
seasons Mr. Taylor has concertized around the globe, performing
throughout
Europe and in Korea, the Philippines,
and the Caribbean. At home in the U.S. he has
appeared with
such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic,
Detroit Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Houston
Symphony, and
Boston Pops, and has toured with the Polish Chamber
Philharmonic. As a soloist he has
performed in such venues
as New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, Washington’s
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen
festivals, and dozens
of others. His first recording released
by Jonathan Digital in 2000 featured works by
present-day American
composers William Bolcom and Derek Bermel. His most recent
recording, Liszt’s Twelve Transcendental Etudes, was
released in 2003 on the Liszt
Digital label. Other recent projects of interest include: the commission
and premiere
with the Indianapolis
Symphony of a piano concerto by Derek Bermel, made possible
by a Christel Award from the American Pianists’ Association;
investigations into the
compositions of the legendary pianist
Gunnar Johansen for a retrospective concert
in September 2006;
several performances and lectures on the complete etudes of
György Ligeti; and a performance of the Bach Goldberg
Variations on the unique
double-manual Steinway piano in
the collection of the University of Wisconsin.
Mr.
Taylor owes much of his success to several outstanding teachers,
including
Russell Sherman, Maria Curcio-Diamand, Francisco
Aybar, and Julie Bees. In addition
to performing, he is currently
Paul Collins Associate Professor of Piano Performance
at
the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He pursues a variety
of other interests,
including: mathematics, in which field
he received a summa cum laude degree from
Harvard University
in 1992; philosophy (he has recently published an article
in the
Oxford Free Will Handbook coauthored with the leading
scholar Daniel Dennett);
computing (one project being to
create a compiler for a new programming language);
linguistics;
and biking, which is his primary means of commuting. Mr.
Taylor lives in
Middleton, Wisconsin, with his wife, musicologist
Denise Pilmer
Taylor, and two daughters.
May 2006
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