THOMAS SCHULTZ, piano, has established an international reputation both as an interpreter of music from the classical tradition – particularly Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt – and as one of the leading exponents of the music of our time. Among his recent engagements are solo recitals in New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Ghent, Seoul, Taipei and Kyoto, and at the Schoenberg Festival in Vienna, the Piano Spheres series in Los Angeles, Korea’s Tongyoung Festival, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento and the April in Santa Cruz Festival. He has also appeared as a soloist at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, and in chamber music performances with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Da Camera Society of Houston, Robert Craft’s 20th Century Classics Ensemble and the St. Lawrence String Quartet. In 2005 he gave a series of masterclasses on the piano music of the Second Viennese school at the SchoenbergCenter in Vienna.
His recitals are notable for programming that celebrates the continuing vitality of the piano repertoire, juxtaposing the old and the new or focusing solely on new works. He has worked closely with such eminent composers as Cage, Feldman, Wolff, Rzewski, Earle Brown, Jonathan Harvey and Elliott Carter (in performances of the Double Concerto at the Colorado Music Festival and at Alice Tully Hall in New York).
Since 2002, Schultz has included in his recitals works written especially for him by Frederic Rzewski (The Babble, 2003), Christian Wolff (Touch, 2002; Long Piano, 2005), Hyo-shin Na (Rain Study, 1999; Walking, Walking, 2003), Walter Zimmermann (AIMIDE, 2001/02), Boudewijn Buckinx (The Floating World, 2004) and Yuji Takahashi (For Thomas Schultz, 2001).
His recording of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Solo Pianos is on the MusicMasters label; he can be heard in chamber works of Earle Brown on a Newport Classics recording and his recordings of works by the Korean composer Hyo-shin Na on CDs from the Seoul and TopArt labels have received special recognition. His solo CDs, (a double cd of the Goldberg Variations of Bach and Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated and a cd of works written for him by Takahashi, Buckinx and Wolff) are on the Wooden Fish label.
Schultz’s musical studies were with John Perry, Leonard Stein and Philip Lillestol. He has been a member of the piano faculty at Stanford University since 1994.
For more info, please visit: thomasschultzpianist.com