Schedule
September
13, 2026– Christopher Taylor, piano
Hailed
by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist”
(The Los Angeles Times), Christopher Taylor has distinguished himself
throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents
and interests. He is known for a
passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti,
and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans
four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt
Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar
masterworks. Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Mr. Taylor brings to
it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and
grace.
Mr.
Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to
Russia, Western Europe, East Asia, and the Carribean.
At home in the U.S. he has appeared with such
orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, and the Milwaukee
Symphony. As a soloist he has performed in
New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for
the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other
venues. In chamber settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians,
including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying
Quartets. His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen, and
present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel. Throughout his career Mr.
Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects. Examples include: an upcoming tour in which
he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven
symphonies by Liszt;
performances and lectures on the complete etudes of György
Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique
double-manual Steinway piano in the collection of the University of
Wisconsin. He has actively promoted the
rediscovery and refurbishment of the latter instrument; in recent years he has
also been building a reinvented and modernized version of it, a project that
relies on his computer and engineering skills and was unveiled in a
demonstration recital in 2016.
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 Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van
Cliburn International Piano Competition. 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.
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 his busy concert schedule, he currently serves as Paul Collins Professor
of Piano Performance at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He pursues a
variety of other interests, including: mathematics (he
received a summa cum laude degree from Harvard University in this field in
1992); philosophy (an article he coauthored with the leading scholar Daniel
Dennett appears in the Oxford Free Will Handbook); computing; linguistics; and
biking, which is his primary means of commuting. Christopher Taylor is a
Steinway artist.
Text
from https://music.wisc.edu/staff/taylor-christopher/
Copyright © 2026 Richland Concert Association
Last
update 10/15/2026
