PIANO SOLOIST

MICHAEL LEWIN is one of America’s foremost concert pianists, winning over audiences in 30 countries with playing of “majestic power and searing emotion.” (The London Times).  His career was launched with victories in the Liszt International Competition in Utrecht, the American Pianists Award and the William Kapell International Piano Competition. His numerous recordings have won a Grammy Award and a Roundglass Music Award.

 He has appeared as orchestral soloist with the Netherlands Philharmonic, Cairo Symphony, China National Radio Orchestra, Bucharest Philharmonic, Youth Orchestra of the Americas, Athens State Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the Phoenix, Indianapolis, Miami, North Carolina, West Virginia, Nevada, New Orleans, Colorado, Guadalajara, and Puerto Rico Symphonies. Recital appearances include New York’s Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Taiwan’s National Concert Hall, Hong Kong’s City Hall Theatre, Holland’s Muziekcentrum, Moscow’s Great Hall, the Athens Megaron, the National Gallery of Art, Firenze’s Teatro Niccolini, the Newport, Ravinia and Spoleto Festivals and PBS Television. His extensive repertoire includes over 40 piano concertos, and he is particularly praised for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy and a host of American and Latin American composers. He has premiered many new works, and during the 2027-28 concert season will be performing Douglas Knehan’s Piano Concerto No. 2 “Hurricane”, which was written for him.

 Mr. Lewin’s award-winning discography on Sono Luminus, Naxos and Centaur includes a pair of  Debussy recordings entitled “Beau Soir” and “Starry Night,” the complete piano music of Charles T. Griffes, Scarlatti Sonatas, “Michael Lewin plays Liszt”, a Russian recital of Scriabin, Balakirev and Glazunov, a Gottschalk disc entitled “Bamboula!”, “If I Were a Bird”(a collection of bird-themed pieces), “Piano Phantoms” (ghost/phantoms inspired works), and the four Violin & Piano Sonatas by William Bolcom with violinist Irina Muresanu. He won a Grammy Award in 2014 for the New Age album “Winds of Samsara.”

 Michael Lewin is Professor and Head of Piano at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. He presents masterclasses worldwide, directs the Boston Conservatory Piano Masters Series and has taught many prize-winning and prominent pianists. He is a Juilliard School graduate and a Steinway Artist. His teachers included Leon Fleisher, Yvonne Lefebure, Adele Marcus and Irwin Freundlich.
Visit www.michaellewin.com

COMPOSER

DOUGLAS KNEHANS is an American-Australian composer whose music has been performed, recorded, and broadcast worldwide by leading orchestras, opera companies, chamber ensembles, and distinguished soloists. Hailed by The New Yorker for its "primitive force and melodic insistence that recall Stravinsky," his music has earned international recognition through performances, recordings, broadcasts, and awards including The American Prize, ISCM World Music Days, the Kennedy Center, New Music USA, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Australia Council for the Arts. He is the founder and Artistic Director of ABLAZE Records, and his music is distinguished by dramatic intensity, architectural clarity, expressive immediacy, and exceptional orchestral craftsmanship.

Recent major orchestral recordings include his searing Cloud Ossuary: Symphony No. 4 the triptych Unfinished Earth: Symphony No. 3 and the flute concerto Tempest, recorded by London Symphony Orchestra Principal Flutist Gareth Davies with the Brno Philharmonic; Dark City: Cello Concerto No. 2, recorded by Grammy Award-winning cellist Zuill Bailey and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Ripple: Symphony No. 1 with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine; and Drift for oboe and strings, performed by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Principal Oboist Dwight Parry under the baton of Awadagin Pratt.

Knehans' operatic works have likewise earned international recognition. His first opera, The Ascension of Robert Flau, received its premiere in a Barrie Kosky production for Opera Australia in Sydney. His second opera, Backwards from Winter, was premiered by the Center for Contemporary Opera during New York's NYOperafest before receiving a new Dutch production for Australia's Dark Mofo Festival. Reviewing the recording, Colin Clarke described the work as "an astonishingly visceral Winterreise for the 21st century… this is what contemporary opera should be like."

Gramophone has described Knehans as "a composer of considerable fluency and instrumental imagination," while Fanfare hailed his music as "...radiant and multicolored. This is music of tremendous imagination. Knehans scores with a masterly hand, his sound paintbrush unerringly hitting the mark."

His artistic career has been recognized through prestigious residencies and fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Meet the Composer in New York, and the 1995 Boulez/IRCAM Carnegie Hall Residency devoted to Pierre Boulez's ...explosante-fixe.... In 2025 he was named Wachtmeister Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He has appeared as featured guest composer at international festivals in Ukraine, Poland, Australia, and the United States, and at leading universities throughout the world.