Jan Lisiecki & Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Biography Jan Lisiecki & Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Jan Lisiecki
The Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki was born in Calgary to Polish parents in 1995. After gradu-ating from high school there in January 2011, he attended the Glenn Gould School of Music in Toronto. Now recognized around the world for his poetic and mature playing, Jan has received several awards, among others as a 2010 Révélation Radio-Canada Musique and a 2011 Jeune Soliste des Radios Francophones. In 2010, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute released his live recordings of both Chopin concertos with Sinfonia Varsovia and Howard Shelley. This album was awarded the Diapason découverte. Diapason described him as “an unmannered virtuoso” and singled out for praise his “irresistibly natural playing”.
Jan has shared the stage with such renowned artists as Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma and Pinchas Zukerman and substituted for Nelson Freire in four concerts in France. He has appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York, opened the Seoul International Music Festival in Korea and performed for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and an audience of 100,000 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Also a dedicated performer of chamber music, Jan has collaborated with the New Zealand String Quartet, Quatuor Ébène and the Penderecki String Quartet, appearing at festivals including Ravinia, Verbier, Montpellier, La Roque d’Anthéron, Warsaw (“Chopin and His Europe”), Bologna, Auvers-sur-Oise, Menton, Merano, Seoul and many others in Canada and the USA. Among the highlights of Jan Lisiecki’s 2011/12 season were the opening concert of the Orchestre de Paris under Paavo Järvi at Salle Pleyel and concerts in Montreal with the Orchestre Métropolitain under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, debuts with the MDR Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, as well as a European recital tour. On his Japan tour in the autumn, he appeared in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. Later in 2012 he made his debuts with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra under Antonio Pappano and with the New York Philharmonic under Daniel Harding.
In March 2013, Lisiecki substituted at short notice for Martha Argerich in a Bologna concert under Claudio Abbado. Further engagements in 2013/14 include a Japan tour with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Nézet-Séguin, Mozart concertos with Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center, a German tour with the Prague Philharmonia and Jakob Hrusa and concerts with Hrusa and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, concerts with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreál under Kazushi Ono and with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra under Krysztof Urbański, a European recital tour including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Rome’s Accademia di Santa Cecilia and the Berlin Philharmonie, as well as other European and North American recital and orchestral engagements and festival appearances including Verbier, Vail, Schleswig-Holstein and Warsaw (Chopin).
Lisiecki’s performances have been broadcast on Bavarian Radio, BBC Radio, CBC Canada, Austrian Radio, Radio France and Radio Luxembourg, as well as on television on France 3 and TV 1 and 2 in Poland. He was featured in the CBC Next! series as one of Canada’s most promising young artists and in The Reluctant Prodigy, Joe Schlesinger’s 2009 CBC National News documentary about him.
Jan Lisiecki performs frequently for various charity organizations, including the David Foster Foundation, the Polish Humanitarian Organization and the Wish Upon a Star Foundation. In June 2008 he was appointed a National Youth Representative by UNICEF Canada.
In 2011 Jan Lisiecki signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. His first recording under this agreement, released in April 2012, features Mozart’s Piano Concertos K.466 and 467 with Christian Zacharias conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. A CD containing his performances of the complete Chopin Etudes Opp. 10 and 25, will be issued in April 2013.
