Bio:
“A performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), pianist Marc André Hamelin is known worldwide for his unrivaled blend of consummate musicianship and brilliant technique in the great works of the established repertoire, as well as for his intrepid exploration of the rarities of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries – in concert and on disc – earning him legendary status as a true icon of the piano.
Mr. Hamelin begins the 19/20 season performing the Brahms Piano concerti with the Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Le Festival de Lanaudière, and the world premiere of Ryan Wigglesworth’s piano concerto at the BBC Proms, led by the composer. Other summer appearances include recitals at the Schubertiade, Helsingborg Piano Festival, Mänttä Music Festival, Domaine Forget, Orford Music Festival, the Newport Music Festival, and at the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival with friend and regular collaborator, Leif Ove Andsnes.
Recital appearances this season include a return to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage on the Great Artists Series. He also performs at Wigmore Hall, the George Enescu Festival, Ascona (Switzerland), Prague, Munich, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Moscow State Philharmonic, at the Elbphilharmonie for the Husum Rarities of Piano Music Festival, Monte Carlo, and the Heidelberg Festival, among other dates.
Mr. Hamelin is the inaugural guest curator for Portland Piano International, where he opens the season with two solo recitals. He returns to San Francisco Performances – a series with whom he has a long and deeply supportive artistic relationship – as a Perspectives Artist for their 40th Anniversary Season, performing a solo recital; Die Winterreise with tenor Mark Padmore; and the world premiere of his own Piano Quintet, commissioned by SFP and performed by himself and the Alexander String Quartet.
An exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, in 19/20, Hyperion releases two albums by Mr. Hamelin – one a solo disc and the other with the Takács Quartet. He recently released a disc of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-Flat Major and Four Impromptus; a landmark disc of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Concerto for Two Pianos with Leif Ove Andsnes; Morton Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus; and Medtner’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski. His impressive Hyperion discography of more than 60 recordings includes concertos and works for solo piano by such composers as Alkan, Godowsky, and Medtner, as well as brilliantly received performances of Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, and Shostakovich.
He was honored with the 2014 ECHO Klassik Instrumentalist of Year (Piano) and Disc of the Year by Diapason Magazine and Classica Magazine for his three-disc set of Busoni: Late Piano Music and an album of his own compositions, Hamelin: Études, which received a 2010 Grammy nomination and a first prize from the German Record Critics’ Association.
Mr. Hamelin was a distinguished member of the jury of the 15 th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2017 where each of the 30 competitors in the preliminary round performed Hamelin’s Toccata on L’Homme armé; this was the first time the composer of the commissioned work was also a member of the jury. Mr. Hamelin has composed music throughout his career, with nearly 30 compositions to his name. The majority of those works – including the Études and Toccata on L’Homme armé – are published by Edition Peters.
Mr. Hamelin makes his home in the Boston area with his wife, Cathy Fuller. Born in Montreal, Marc-André Hamelin is the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the German Record Critics’ Association and has received seven Juno Awards and eleven GRAMMY nominations. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Chevalier de l’Ordre du Québec, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
GENERAL MANAGEMENT
Colbert Artists Management, Inc.
Christina Putnam [email protected]
212.245.0427
Lee Prinz [email protected]
212.757.0783
307 Seventh Avenue
Suite 2006
New York, NY 10001
www.colbertartists.com
EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT
Maestro Arts
Thomas Hull [email protected]
+ 44 7974 567350
Emma Barclay [email protected]
+44 7496 480064
One Eastfields Avenue
LondonSW18 1FQ
United Kingdom
www.maestroarts.com
PRESS & MEDIA
8VA Music Consultancy
Patricia Price [email protected]
800.530.3318
New York, NY 10024
www.8vamusicconsultancy.com
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).