"A pianist with the Midas touch." – THE NEW YORK TIMES

MICHAEL BORISKIN has become recognized on five continents as one of the most imaginative and versatile American pianists of his generation. Whether the composer is Mozart or Beethoven, Brahms or Ravel, Copland or Gershwin, Perle or Lutoslawski, Mr. Boriskin offers "an adventure for the audience" (The New York Times). Each performance and recording attests to a vivid communicativeness, natural expressivity, and deeply musical virtuosity that have made him one of the most highly-regarded exponents of both old and new works. Mr. Boriskin has performed throughout the U. S. and in over 30 countries. His extensive international itinerary includes the San Francisco, Seattle, and Utah Symphonies, New York Chamber Symphony, Polish National and Munich Radio Orchestras, American Composers Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, and UNAM Philharmonic of Mexico City, among many other orchestras. He has performed at many of the world's foremost concert venues, including Lincoln Center (on its Great Performers Series), the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, BBC in London, South West German Radio, Theatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, Vienna's Arnold Schoenberg Center, Athens Festival of Music and Dance, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Library of Congress, and Istanbul International Festival. He is a familiar figure on National Public Radio and on American Public Media as performer, commentator, and host, and he has been heard on Performance Today, Studio 360, Marketplace, and many other programs. His innovative broadcast series CENTURYVIEW, celebrating piano works of the past hundred years, was enjoyed for three seasons by over one-million listeners on 200 NPR stations coast-to-coast. Mr. Boriskin is also a much sought-after guest with chamber ensembles worldwide, and has worked with the Borromeo, St. Petersburg, St. Lawrence, Penderecki, Ludwig, and Lark String Quartets, Dorian and Arioso Wind Quintets, and the New York Philharmonic Ensembles. A prolific recording artist, Mr. Boriskin's impressive discography on BMG/Conifer, New World, Koch International, Albany, and many other labels ranges widely from Brahms and Tchaikovsky through the present, and continues to grow in depth and breadth. His recording on SONY Classical of Gershwin's complete works for piano and orchestra with the Eos Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Sheffer was awarded a coveted Rosette from Britain’s Penguin Guide to Recordings. He recorded five concerti for Newport Classic, including the rarely-heard Tchaikovsky Second and the Prokofiev First. He has four highly-acclaimed discs of postwar American piano works on New World Records, which have often appeared on “Best Recordings” lists of The New York Times and many other publications. On Bridge and Albany, he has recorded both of George Perle's towering piano concerti (the second of which was written for Mr. Boriskin). Other solo discs have been devoted to Brahms, Poulenc, Joplin (which appeared on Crossover Charts in the U.K.), and Lou Harrison, as well as concerti by Richard Danielpour and Edward Smaldone.

As The Los Angeles Times noted, Mr. Boriskin's lively programming is "a paragon of enlightenment," and he actively seeks, through content and presentation, to refresh and broaden the concert experience. His vast repertoire reaches back to the works of Rameau, Scarlatti, Bach, and other Baroque masters, and he has also worked with virtually every major American composer of the past 35 years. Long ago, Mr. Boriskin broke the constraints of a traditional performing career, with major institutions enlisting his many talents. As Artistic and Executive Director of Copland House, he has guided the national emergence of this unique creative center for American music based at Aaron Copland's National Historic Landmark home. He has served over the years as an artistic advisor for programs and projects at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y, Columbia University's Miller Theatre, New Line Cinema, and the fabled Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles, and has traveled as an emissary for the U. S. Department of State and the U. S. Information Agency. For the New York Philharmonic, he played a significant role as piano soloist, chamber music collaborator, pre-concert lecturer, moderator, and program consultant at the orchestra's Completely Copland Festival. As Music Director for three seasons of the White Oak Dance Project, his collaborations with Mikhail Baryshnikov were celebrated throughout the dance and music worlds, and Mr. Boriskin oversaw the musical preparations and production of nearly 250 performances on 10 national and international tours. An accomplished writer, his articles have appeared in American Record Guide, Symphony, Chamber Music, Stagebill, Ballet Review, Piano and Keyboard, Clavier, The Piano Quarterly, and other publications, and he was a contributing author to the Schirmer book on Vladimir Horowitz. He has had a long and extensive commitment to education, and has been affiliated at various times with the Mannes College of Music, Manhattan School of Music, City University of New York, University of California, Purchase College Conservatory of Music, and many other important institutions. He has also brought music to life in master classes, residencies, workshops, and guest lectures at campuses around the world. As The New York Observer noted, "Michael Boriskin is an American pianist who grew up in Long Beach, Long Island to become one of the world's most valuable piano virtuosos." He was born in New York City to a family long active in music and the visual arts. He attended public schools on Long Island, and pursued his musical studies at The Juilliard School and the City University of New York at Queens College.

Photo: Trish Lewis

PRESS

NEW YORK TIMES

"The entire performance was an adventure for the audience -- gripping, spontaneous yet tautly controlled."

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"Boriskin was a discovery. He's a brilliant musician who spins the most intricate passage work with the grace

and ease of a skilled flycaster or perfect dancer."

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (UK)

"Boriskin ranges wide in his sympathies, proving warm in his understanding of divergent composers and

capable of penetrating insights into each of them."

DIE WELT (GERMANY)

"A MUSICAL DISCOVERY [Headline]…A pianist of the highest rank -- a piano recital which was extraordinary

in every respect. Boriskin is a thinking pianist with a strong sense of form who also knows how to project the

emotional power of music."

THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER

"Boriskin is a highly finished artist with a firm commitment to the long line, a gratifying sense of tonal

differentiation, a clear wit, and a romantic temperament."

LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Boriskin's playing exhibited equal parts suavity and elan."

AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE

"Boriskin is one of the most skilled and versatile pianists of his generation."

THE WASHINGTON POST

"Boriskin understands what the composer wants and communicates his ideas provocatively and with authority."

FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG (GERMANY)

"Brilliant, well-developed technique, almost inexhaustible reserves of strength, as well as a natural feeling for

the large-scale structures."

THE GLOBE AND MAIL (CANADA)

"Boriskin is a sensitive and virtuosic player."

FANFARE

"Consisting of rapid scale passages, this movement [of Sebastian Currier’s Verge] is designated almost too

fast (although it is not too fast for Michael Boriskin, a brilliant pianist who has done as much as anyone for

contemporary music.)”

PENGUIN GUIDE

“Boriskin brings dazzling yet totally unforced bravura from ever nimble fingers. The performances [Gershwin]

have a superb sense of style and are for our time what Bernstein's famous versions were for the 50's & 60's."

BUFFALO NEWS

“A concert that will be remembered for a long time, with the irrepressible Michael Boriskin as soloist

[Shostakovich Concerto No. 2]. Boriskin played with wit and sensitivity, and showed tremendous style. At the

snap-bang end of the first movement, it actually hurt not to applaud.”

N.Y. / REGION | ARTS | WESTCHESTER

By PHILLIP LUTZ OCT. 11, 2013

Amid the awards crowding the walls of Aaron Copland’s former home in Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., hangs a neatly framed movie

advertisement with a modest distinction of its own: The ad, from a 1961 issue of Variety, focuses its sales pitch on the composer,

Copland, not the star or the director. The novel approach suggests the centrality of the score and its creator to the enterprise.

The movie died at the box office — an early indie titled “Something Wild,” it may have succumbed to controversy over its sexual images,

considered graphic in their day. But the ad’s invocation of Copland emphasizes that the composer’s currency extended well beyond the

few signature ballet scores and the ubiquitous concert work “Fanfare for the Common Man” for which he is best known today.

It is a point that Michael Boriskin, the artistic and executive director of the nonprofit group Copland House, is constantly trying to

make. And it is one that will be front and center when Copland House and the Jacob Burns Film Center, in Pleasantville, N.Y., join

forces from Oct. 17 through 20 for a short festival featuring screenings of six Coplandscored films — among them “Something Wild” —

and a concert of Copland chamber works. “This project is to shine a light on these two lesser known but equally great aspects of the

work,” Mr. Boriskin said.

Seated behind a long hardwood table that dominates the studio in the Copland home — a rustic getaway in the woods of northern

Westchester County that is both a national historic landmark and the Copland House headquarters — Mr. Boriskin was clearly animated

by the prospect of the presentations. And fittingly so, as he guided the choice of material, will play piano with the Music From Copland

House ensemble, and is to answer audience questions on the first two nights of the screenings.

Those screenings, to be held at the Burns center, will open Oct. 17 with “Appalachian Spring,” a seldomseen cinematic version of the

Martha Graham ballet released in 1958 and featuring Graham dancing to Copland’s Pulitzer Prizewinning score. The second night (Oct.

18) will feature movies based on the John Steinbeck tales “The Red Pony” (1949) and “Of Mice and Men” (1939), in which Copland

introduced a spare aesthetic that contrasted with the lush romanticism of the film scoring of the time. “Copland’s film music was really

innovative in charting a different artistic course,” Mr. Boriskin said.

The third night (Oct. 19) of screenings will offer Spike Lee’s 1998 film “He Got Game,” which places familiar Copland themes in a

modern urban context, and William Wyler’s 1949 film “The Heiress,” which won an Academy Award for best original score. Running for

a total of just 15 of the film’s 115 minutes, the score achieves maximum impact with a minimum of judiciously placed musical interludes.

“To define a profile with those limitations,” Mr. Boriskin said, “and doing it sporadically and trying to connect it all over the course of a

film, it’s a significant accomplishment.”

For all Copland accomplished in “The Heiress,” his achievement may be no less impressive in the last offering (Oct. 20), “Something

Wild.” Directed by the Actors Studio veteran Jack Garfein and starring Carroll Baker, it featured the last score Copland worked on and

the only one he wrote in the Cortlandt Manor home, where he spent the last 30 years of his life. There, at age 60, Moviola at hand, he

was able to examine the film frame by frame without leaving his studio.

The effort paid off, said Brian Ackerman, the programming director at the Burns center. While Copland had dealt with grim subject

matter before, the sexual violence depicted in “Something Wild” prompted him to depart from the soaring populism he so famously nurtured and revisit the hardedge modernism of his early concert work. The resulting score seems fresh 50 years on, Mr. Ackerman

said. “He’s modern in such a way that it still works,” he said.

The modernist sensibility will also suffuse the pieces Mr. Boriskin has chosen for the live performance on the afternoon of Oct. 20 at the

Merestead estate in Mount Kisco, N.Y., a county historic site that has a partnership with Copland House. Titled “Sonorous Images:

Copland’s Chamber Music,” the performance in the onetime living room of Merestead mansion will feature Copland’s Piano Quartet,

from 1950, and his Sextet, a reworked Short Symphony that had its premiere in 1939.

The reworking, which was intended to simplify an orchestration many found unplayable, did not rid the piece of all its complexities. On

hand to sort out what is left of them will be Curtis Macomber and Karina Canellakis on violins, Leslie Tomkins on viola, Alexis Pia

Gerlach on cello, Derek Bermel on clarinet — and Mr. Boriskin, whose presence Ms. Tomkins deemed crucial. “He knows the ins and

outs of it,” she said.

__________

“The Film Music of Aaron Copland,” at the Jacob Burns Film Center, 364 Manville Road, Pleasantville, N.Y., Oct. 17 through 20. For information: burnsfilmcenter.org or (914) 7475555. “Sonorous Images: Copland’s Chamber Works,” at Copland House at Merestead, 455 Byram Lake Road, Mount Kisco, 3 p.m., Oct. 20. For information: coplandhouse.org or (914) 7884659.

LIFE & ARTS

11/3/2012, 12:29 AMBPO conductor JoAnn Falletta, right, applauds pianist Michael Boriskin after performing Dmitry Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op.102.

This was at Kleinhans on , Friday, Nov. 2, 2012. {Photo by Robert Kirkham / Buffalo News} Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News

An unforgettable lesson in Russian poetry for BPO BY: Mary Kunz Goldman / The Buffalo News | @MaryKunzGoldman

Music Director JoAnn Falletta is conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra this weekend in an all-Shostakovich program, a concert that will be

remembered for a long time. It starts with the Piano Concerto No. 2, with the irrepressible Michael Boriskin as soloist. After intermission comes the

massive Symphony No. 13, featuring Russian bass Mikhail Svetlov and the men of the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus.

The piano concerto is like a diamond – compact, chiseled and sparkling. The massive Symphony No. 13, in contrast, is a big boulder of a piece,

based on the poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, most notably “Babi Yar,” about a massacre of Jews that the Nazis carried out and the Soviet regime

lied about. It’s rare to hear this symphony live (the last time the BPO played it was almost 40 years ago). And what hits this performance out of the

park is that Yevtushenko is on hand to read his poetry.

Yevtushenko, who is 79, is a thrilling presence. He is a big, tall man, walks elegantly with a cane and gestures vividly with his huge, expressive

hands. Though he now lives in Tulsa, Okla., his accent is such that you can understand only about a third of what he says. When he praised our “or-

KES-tra” and said Falletta was an “irreesistibly charming conductor,” you had to smile out of pure pleasure. He declaimed “Babi Yar” partly in

Russian and partly in English. What a spirit he has. And what a spirit this concert has.

This is the first time the BPO has performed that effervescent piano concerto. It’s an amazing little piece, full of syncopated dance rhythms, like

Prokofiev ballets, and long lines of octaves zig-zagging this way and that. The middle movement, the Andante, soars like a romantic movie theme, as

lovely as Rachmaninoff.

Boriskin and the orchestra’s musicians played with wit and sensitivity. Everyone was crisp and in sync. Boriskin showed tremendous style. He used a

score, but he seemed to have internalized the music’s rhythms. His playing, though quiet and controlled, has zip. At the snap-bang end of the first

movement, it actually hurt not to applaud. The Andante sang. The orchestra’s long introduction was muted and haunting. After the concerto, going

into the symphony was like going into a tunnel.

Hearing this music is like going to the Soviet Union. The desolate chimes, the muffled timpani, the sometimes brutal brass. Like Yevtushenko’s

poetry, the music gives us not only the drama and tragedy of the country, but the static misery of it. The movement that tells of women standing in

long lines to buy food, their pots and pans suggested by rattles from the percussion, created a terrible feeling of gloom.

Svetlov, who appeared in Buffalo earlier this year in Nickel City Opera’s “La Boheme,” has a fine voice and great diction and expressiveness. Like

the Irish tenor or the Italian soprano, the Russian bass is a distinctive marvel and he did the tradition proud. He was passionate, he was oddly

detached, he was funny and sardonic.

The men of the Philharmonic Chorus, prepared by Roland Martin, also came across well. There are interludes when the chorus has to echo Svetlov in

rapid, intense rhythms, and the singers pulled it off. Falletta paced the piece well so that it built to several horrifying high points, until the

symphony’s final notes died out gradually, like a sigh.

The concert, which takes place at Kleinhans Music Hall, repeats tonight at 8.

The Penguin Guide

Piano concerto in F: Rhapsody in blue: Second Rhapsody for piano and orchestra: Variations on ‘I got rhythm’

(M)***Classic fm Dig, 76505 57012-2 [id]. Michael Boriskin, Eos O, Jonathan Sheffer.

This is the most seductive pairing of the Rhapsody in blue and the Concerto

in F to have come our way for a long time. The performances have a superb

sense of style, and are for today what Bernstein’s famous versions were for

the 1950’s and ‘60’s. Michael Boriskin is a native New Yorker, and he and

Jonathan Sheffer immediately establish a partnership which brings an

idiomatic and freshly individual approach to these two concertante

masterpieces, which uniquely span the jazz world and the ethos of the

concert hall. The keenly sophisticated and inventive ‘I got rhythm’

variations are no less glittering and are wonderfully infectious. The

orchestral details throughout is a joy (especially illuminating in the less

inspired Second Rhapsody), while in the concerto the big climaxes open out

to engulf the listener expansively and ardently. Boriskin’s brilliant pianism

is wittily skittish in the most infectious way, both in the Rhapsody and in

the delectably played central section of the concerto’s slow movement. The

finale brings dazzling yet totally unforced bravura from ever nimble fingers,

matched by sparkling orchestral rhythms. The recording is first rate. This is

not to be missed.

Musicians enjoy rare chance to collaborate

By: Gwenda Nemerofsky | Posted: 09/20/2012 1:00 AM

Michael Boriskin Photo: TRISH LEWIS

It often strikes me when I see a concert artist walk onstage at a performance how poised and

calm they seem before they begin to play or sing. Whether seated at a piano or waiting during

their musical introduction, their steely focus and patience is something to behold. It's not only the possible nerves and anticipation the musician might be experiencing, but

what's gone on behind the scenes to get them where they are that boggles the mind. Besides

the decades of training and countless practice and rehearsal hours, there are often hectic

performance schedules and lengthy travel agendas to contend with. Take violinist Tim Fain, who will be playing opening night at Virtuosi Concerts with pianist

Michael Boriskin this Saturday, for instance. When we did our interview, he had just stepped

off the stage after playing with the Orquestra Petrobrás Sinfônica in Rio de Janeiro.

He was scheduled to perform the following day with another Brazilian orchestra, the Barra Mansa Symphony. Next month, the 36-year-old is off to

Melbourne, Australia, with his solo multi-media show Portals, which, upon return to his native U.S.A., he will continue touring. In between all this

he is coming to Winnipeg.

Michael Boriskin may not tour quite as much these days, but his schedule is as busy as ever, and the diversity is what makes it especially impressive.

He is a piano soloist, prolific recording artist, chamber musician, writer and educator and holds down the artistic director and executive director

positions of Copland House, a creative centre dedicated to American musical heritage and to fostering greater public awareness and appreciation of

that nation's composers and their work.

"I gave up sleep a long time ago," laughed the vibrant 60-year-old in a telephone interview from his home in Bedford, New York. "It takes a lot of

compartmentalization," he said of his very full life. "I enjoy it. I was never interested in 'just' being a touring performer. I love performing, but the

idea of spending life on the road doing concerts wasn't for me. I had too many interests to do a selection of music day in and day out. I enjoy working

with people, forming collaborations."

His collaboration with Fain is one Boriskin obviously enjoys. "Tim is a wonderfully dynamic and musical artist. We met while doing a musical

project at a summer music festival in Utah. We hit it off and really enjoyed working together. But our schedules go in such different directions -- we

take every chance to work together."

Fain, on the other hand, thrives on touring. "I love to play as many concerts as I can and a wide variety of them," the Curtis Institute graduate said via

email. "Whether it's soloist with orchestra, playing chamber music, or doing recital work, or collaboration with an artist from a different genre... it's

all great. "Recently I've been doing a great deal of touring with my show Portals, in which I explore the yearning for human connection in the digital

age with collaborators on screen, including Benjamin Millepied, who directed and choreographed a dance film as the centrepiece of the evening

along with a work I commissioned from Philip Glass and parts of Leonard Cohen's poetry collection Book of Longing... It has been a thrill creating

and touring with this... so I do spend a lot of time on the road. But I also just spent the entire month of August at home with my wife and three-year-

old daughter, which was a nice change."

You may not know his name, but you've likely seen and heard Fain before, as he appeared onscreen and in the soundtrack of the 2010 hit film Black

Swan. "I worked with Benjamin Millepied at New York City Ballet," Fain said getting the gig. "He asked me if I would like to be part of a new

Darren Aronofsky movie... Having attended Juilliard and spent some time with dancers over the years, a psychological thriller about a ballerina

seemed a perfectly natural mix of elements, not to mention my huge respect for Natalie Portman, and so I said yes. It was a really memorable time."

Fain and Boriskin, with input from Virtuosi artistic director Harry Strub, have put together some top-notch repertoire for Saturday's concert, entitled

Charisma. It includes the emotive Franck Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, Beethoven's melody-rich Spring Sonata (which Fain recalls first

playing for his Grade 5 class at lunchtime in the cafeteria) some Brahms and Bach and American composer Pierre Jalbert's 2010 work, Wild

Ambrosia. " He is a gifted composer with a distinctive voice," Boriskin said of Jalbert, "He writes very compelling music."

Boriskin, who also has a broadcasting background, plans to provide introductory remarks at the concert. "I enjoy trying to make the whole concert

experience more inviting and casual," he said. "It leads to better receptivity in listeners and personalizes the experience. This is, after all, a decidedly

human endeavour. What I'm doing isn't merely a job -- these things are my passion."

Between Fain's love of concertizing and Boriskin's passion, the audience should be in for a treat. The concert is at 8 p.m. at Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall

in the University of Winnipeg. Tickets are $33/adults and seniors, $15/students, $5/ high school, available at 786-9000 or www.virtuosi.mb.ca

gwenda.nemerofsky@shaw.ca Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 20, 2012 D5

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Dworkin & Company Allison Weissman allison@dworkincompany.com 914-244-3803 dworkincompany.com