Historical
Piano Concerts Series
About
the Musicians
Matthew Odell
The American pianist Matthew Odell
began his studies at the age of 10 and has since won acclaim for
performances of a wide range of repertoire as a solo recitalist,
soloist with orchestra, and chamber musician. He has been hailed
as “excellent” by the New York Times and “brilliant ... playing with
total commitment and real abandon” by Gramophone. Highlights of
past concert seasons include such diverse projects as Messiaen’s Des
canyons aux étoiles... with David Robertson and the Juilliard Orchestra
for the reopening of Alice Tully Hall, a performance in the New York
Philharmonic’s Stravinsky Festival, and a tour of concerts, lectures,
and masterclasses in England, France, and Spain. Recent concerts
have featured the complete solo piano works of Olivier Messiaen, Pierre
Boulez, Elliott Carter, John Adams, and Michel Merlet.
In
addition to performances in Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at
Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, and the 92nd Street Y in
New York, Mr. Odell has appeared at the Kennedy Center in Washington,
D.C., St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, and at venues in Boston,
Chicago, Miami, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Taipei, and
Helsinki. He has also performed at the Aspen Music Festival, the
European American Musical Alliance in Paris, New York’s Focus!
Festival, the La Gesse Festival in Toulouse, France, Nuits musicales
and Concerts du cloître in Nice, France, and the Rohm International
Music Festival in Kyoto, Japan.
A passionate advocate of
the music of our time, Mr. Odell frequently premieres works written for
him. He has performed contemporary repertoire with the New Juilliard
Ensemble, AXIOM, Peabody Camerata, and the American Art Song Festival,
a group he founded in 2004. He has worked with many prominent
composers, including Pierre Boulez, John Corigliano, Ned Rorem, Mark
Adamo, Michel Merlet, and Robert Aldridge. His debut
album Connections: The Piano Music of Olivier Messiaen and his Students
was recently released on Albany Records, and his recording with flutist
Leslie Stroud of the flute and piano sonatas of Gary Schocker is being
released on Centaur Records in 2019.
Mr. Odell’s special love of
the art song repertoire has resulted in many recitals with singers from
around the world, including the British bass-baritone John
Shirley-Quirk and members of the Metropolitan Opera. For
five years he served on the coaching faculty of the Académie
internationale d’été in Nice, France, and he has performed in the
Marilyn Horne Foundations’s festival The Song Continues at Carnegie
Hall. At Lincoln Center he has presented a tribute to baritone
Pierre Bernac as well as the complete songs of Barber and Duparc.
He is a founding member of The Hampton Trio and Acacia and has
collaborated with a wide array of musicians, including clarinetist
Charles Neidich and pianist Peter Hill.
Mr. Odell currently
teaches at The Juilliard School and frequently presents master classes,
workshops, and lectures at professional conferences and universities
throughout the U.S and Europe. In May 2010 he graduated
with a doctoral degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with
Margo Garrett, Jonathan Feldman, and Brian Zeger. He studied
further with Marian Hahn at the Peabody Conservatory of Music,
graduating Pi Kappa Lambda with both a master of music degree and a
graduate performance diploma in piano performance and with Laurence
Morton at Bob Jones University. He also worked with Karl-Heinz
Kämmerling at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria and with Ann Schein at
the Aspen Music School.