Acclaimed pianist George X. Fu performs five Debussy Études and Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109 by Beethoven for this Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert broadcast.
Hailed by the Boston Music Intelligencer as a “heroic piano soloist” with “stunning virtuosity”, Chinese-American pianist George X. Fu has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the National Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and Bach Society Orchestra of Harvard University. He has performed at various venues, such as the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, and the National Auditorium of Mexico City. His live performances and interviews have been featured on several public television and radio broadcasts throughout the United States, such as On Stage At Curtis, Articulate with Jim Cotter, Performance Today, and Philadelphia’s Music Makers on WRTI Radio in Philadelphia. He has won top prizes in the Oberlin (now Cooper), Lennox, Blount-Slawson, Lee University, and National Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competitions.
After a successful repeat performance as soloist with the North Carolina Symphony in the summer of 2018, this season sees George continue to make solo and chamber appearances throughout the UK, including a solo recital of all-contemporary music with Borough New Music in London. George is the founder and co-Artistic Director of the newly-formed TaoArts Chamber Music Festival, an annual event in the Washington D.C. area. He embarks on a summer tour of Latin America with clarinetist Tania Villasuso and violist Roberto Diaz as part of Curtis on Tour.
Interested in interdisciplinary work, George has worked in various capacities: from collaborating in a ballet project with dancers Isaac and Esteban Hernandez to a capacity crowd in Mexico City; to performing piano etudes by Dmitri Tymoczko in Brooklyn alongside dancer and choreographer Barbara Gail Montero. An avid performer of contemporary music, George has collaborated with Krzysztof Penderecki, Harrison Birtwistle, Unsuk Chin, Matthew Aucoin, and Freya Waley-Cohen.
After a widely acclaimed performance as piano soloist in Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie alongside Stefan Asbury at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 2016, George was then selected as a New Fromm Player for Tanglewood’s 2017 summer season, being featured as a piano soloist in Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques with Vinay Parameswaran, studying the solo piano works of Messiaen with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and focusing intensely on the work of living composers alongside the quartet in residence.
A native of Frederick, Maryland, George received a graduate diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Jonathan Biss and Meng-Chieh Liu. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in economics. He is currently completing a masters’ degree at the Royal Academy of Music in London, studying with Christopher Elton and Joanna MacGregor.
Artist biography and photography courtesy of IMF Chicago.