Skyline Piano Artist Series this fall at Northwestern

EVANSTON - Gilles Vonsattel, Jonathan Biss, Jorge Federico Osorio, Sergei Babayan and Emanuel Ax will be featured in the second season of the Skyline Piano Artist Series, presented by Northwestern University’s Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music.

Ax is the 2016 winner of the Bienen School’s Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance.

All events will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the Mary B. Galvin Recital Hall, located in the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Musical Arts at 70 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston.

Subscribers to the series can save up to 30 percent off single ticket prices and enjoy additional exclusive benefits. Single tickets, available Sept. 19, are $30 for the general public and $10 for students with a valid ID.

Skyline Piano Series performance schedule:

• On Friday, Oct. 14, Gilles Vonsattel will perform works by Beethoven, Benjamin, Janáček and Schumann. Vonsattel is the 2002 winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition, recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, winner of the Geneva Competition and has appeared with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. A member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he has collaborated with artists including Kim Kashkashian, Jerome Lowenthal and Yo-Yo Ma. Vonsattel’s program features Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata No. 26 in E-flat Major (“Les Adieux”), George Benjamin’s “Shadowlines: Six Canonic Preludes,” Leoš Janáček’s Piano Sonata 1.X.1905 and Robert Schumann’s C Major Fantasy.
  
  
• On Friday, Feb. 3, Jonathan Biss will perform works by Schumann, Kurtág, Chopin and Brahms. Biss is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award, Wolf Trap’s Shouse Debut Artist Award and Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, among others. He has displayed his mastery of the classics in a nine-year, nine-disc recording cycle of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas. This year, Biss will perform throughout the United States and Europe, including appearances with the Chicago, Danish National, BBC, Stuttgart Radio and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestras. His program features Robert Schumann’s “Gesänge der Frühe,” selections from Volume VII of György Kurtág’s “Játékok,” Frédéric Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasie and Johannes Brahms’s “Klavierstücke,” Op. 118 and 119.
  
  
• On Saturday, April 1, Jorge Federico Osorio will perform music of Beethoven, Debussy and Schubert. Osorio’s international awards and honors include Mexico’s Medalla Bellas Artes, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Gina Bachauer Award and first prize in the Rhode Island International Master Piano Competition. He has performed with the world’s leading ensembles, including the Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas and Seattle Symphonies. Osorio’s program features Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, Book II of Claude Debussy’s “Preludes” and Franz Schubert’s Sonata No. 20 in A Major.
  
  
• On Thursday, April 27, Sergei Babayan will open the American Liszt Society’s annual conference, hosted this year by the Bienen School of Music. His program will feature works by Liszt and his contemporaries. Babayan has recently performed with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Camerata Israel in Tel Aviv and in duo with Daniil Trifonov in Russia, as well as in numerous recital and chamber music engagements throughout the United States. He has won several first prizes in major international competitions including the Robert Casadesus International Piano Competition and the Scottish International Piano Competition.
  
  
• On Wednesday, May 3, Emanuel Ax will perform an evening of music by Schubert, Adams and Chopin. Seven-time Grammy Award winner Ax performs regularly with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic, among others. His ongoing partnership with the Boston Symphony Orchestra includes visits this season to Montreal, Toronto and Carnegie Hall. This concert takes place during his first residency period with the Bienen School of Music as winner of the 2016 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance. His program includes Samuel Adams’s Impromptus, Franz Schubert’s Four Impromptus (D. 935) and Frédéric Chopin’s Impromptus Nos. 1 and 2 and Sonata No. 3 in B Minor. The performance will be followed by a reception for Skyline Piano Artist Series subscribers.

For more information, call the Bienen School of Music Concert Management Office at 847-491-5441 or visit concertsatbienen.org. To order tickets, call the Bienen School Ticket Office at 847-467-4000 or visit concertsatbienen.org.