Bio:
Born in Nizhni Nowgorod in 1987, Igor Levit moved to Germany with his family at age eight. He completed his piano studies at Hannover Academy of Music, Theatre and Media in 2009 with the highest academic and performance scores in the history of the institute. Igor Levit has studied under the tutelage of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Matti Raekallio, Bernd Goetze, Lajos Rovatkay and Hans Leygraf. As the youngest participant in 2005 Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, Igor Levit won the Silver Prize, as well as the Prize for Best Performer of Chamber Music, the Audience Favorite Prize and the Prize for Best Performer of Contemporary Music.
In Berlin, where he makes his home, Igor Levit plays a Steinway D Grand Piano kindly given to him by the Trustees of Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells.
Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the essential artists of his generation” (New York Times), Igor Levit is the 2018 Gilmore Artist and Royal Philharmonic Society’s “Instrumentalist of the Year” 2018. He is the Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Academy and of the Festival “Standpunkte” of the Heidelberg Spring Festival and has been appointed a professorship at his Alma Mater the University of Music, Drama and Media in Hanover in spring 2019.
In September 2019 Sony Classical releases Igor Levit’s highly anticipated first recording of all Beethoven Sonatas. The season marks the start of three Beethoven sonata cycles at the Lucerne Festival, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and Stockholm’s Konserthuset. The end of the season will see Igor Levit on tour in the United States with an all-Beethoven sonata program – amongst others at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Princeton, Washington, San Francisco and Chicago.
Igor Levit is Barbican Centre’s “Featured Artist” of the 2019/20 season. The residency comprises a solo recital, two duo recitals with pianists Markus Becker and Markus Hinterhäuser as well as a concerto performance with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the baton of Mariss Jansons, with whom he Igor Levit will also tour in Spain in January 2020. Further orchestral engagements will see him on tour in Europe with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by Manfred Honeck and returns amongst others to the Cleveland Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Highlights of past seasons included debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orkest as well as international tours with the Tonhalleorchester Zürich and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
An exclusive recording artist for Sony Classical, Igor Levit’s debut disc of the five last Beethoven Sonatas won the BBC Music Magazine Newcomer of the Year 2014 Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award 2014. In October 2015, Sony Classical released Igor Levit’s third solo album in cooperation with the Festival Heidelberger Frühling featuring Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, which has been awarded the “Recording of the Year” and “Instrumental Award” at the 2016 Gramophone Classical Music Awards.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).