PIANO SOLOIST

Pianist MICHAEL LEWIN is internationally applauded as one of America’s most gifted concert pianists, performing to acclaim in over 30 countries. Acclaimed as an artist of “majestic power and searing emotion,” his popular recordings, charismatic music-making and dazzling virtuosity have won him a worldwide career and a devoted following.Lewin’s career was launched with victories in the Liszt International Piano Competition in the Netherlands, the William Kapell International Competition, and the American Pianists Association Award. At his New York Lincoln Center debut, The New York Times proclaimed that “his immense technique and ability qualify him eminently for success.” His tours have taken him to the Ravinia, Newport and Spoleto Festivals, Moscow’s Great Hall, Hong Kong's City Hall Theater, Taipei's National Concert Hall, China's Poly Theatres, the Opera House of Cairo, the Athens Megaron, Holland’s Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, and London’s Wigmore Hall. His popular PBS Television recital hosted by Victor Borge featuring the Schubert “Wanderer Fantasy” and Chopin Etudes was widely rebroadcast. He has been the featured interview in Clavier and Piano & Keyboard Magazines, and edited piano music of Griffes for C.F. Peters. A Steinway Artist, he was Artistic Director of the Steinway & Sons 150th Anniversary Gala Concert held in 2003 in Boston’s Symphony Hall. A devoted chamber musician, he was Artistic Director of the Boston Conservatory Chamber Players and played in the Lewin-Chang-Díaz Trio and the Lewin-Muresanu Duo. He has premiered music by Joel Hoffman, David Kocsis, Sylvia Rabinof, Robert Chumbley, Andy Vores and John Harbison. Composers with whom Mr. Lewin is particularly associated include Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Chopin, Liszt, Griffes and American and Latin American composers.

Mr. Lewin won a Grammy Award in 2014 for the New Age Album “Winds of Samsara,” and a Round Glass Music Award for his two Debussy recordings for Sono Luminus, “Starry Night” and “Beau Soir”, which have garnered extraordinary critical praise. The discs include both Books of Préludes, Estampes and a variety of other solo works. Also on Sono Luminus is "Piano Phantoms," music inspired by phantoms and the spirit world, and “If I Were a Bird,” a popular collection of bird-themed pieces, which received a Grammy nomination in the "Producer of the Year" category. For Naxos he made a best-selling collection of Scarlatti Sonatas and a landmark two-CD set of the complete piano music of American composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes. His Centaur recordings include “Michael Lewin plays Liszt," “A Russian Piano Recital,” (Scriabin, Glazunov and Balakirev), “Bamboula!" piano music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and the Violin Sonatas of William Bolcom with violinist Irina Muresanu. In preparation is a disc of Latin American piano music.

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.