James Tocco | |
---|---|
Born | 1943 (age 80–81) |
Origin | Detroit, Michigan |
Genres | Classical |
Occupation | Pianist |
Instrument | Piano |
Years active | 51 |
Labels | Sony Classical |
James Tocco (born 1943) is an American concert pianist. He is the youngest of thirteen children born to Vincenzo and Rose Tocco, both Sicilian immigrants.
Born of Sicilian immigrant parents in Detroit, Michigan, Tocco's love of music -especially opera—began in early childhood. At six years old he began studying piano and at twelve he made his orchestral debut, performing Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto. He won a scholarship to the Salzburg Mozarteum and a French government grant to study with Magda Tagliaferro in Paris from 1964 till 1969. His classical music education was completed with Claudio Arrau in New York. Soon afterward, he became more prominent with his first-prize victory in the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, followed being a replacement for Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli as guest soloist for the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto at the Vienna Festival.
In the years since then he has performed internationally, throughout North and South America, Europe, the Soviet Union, Japan, Australia, South Africa] and the Middle East. His orchestral engagements include:
Conductors with whom he has collaborated include:
Tocco is a recitalist, orchestral soloist, chamber musician, and educator. He has performed many American and European masterworks, including Bernstein's Age of Anxiety, which he recorded with Leonard Slatkin and the BBC London Symphony Orchestra, and John Corigliano's Piano Concerto.
The pianist's performances included his Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra debut, performing the MacDowell Concerto and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, both conducted by Leonard Slatkin. An especially accomplished recitalist, Tocco has performed interpretations of Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt, as well as 20th-century composers, and he regularly programs the keyboard works of Handel. Other performances include Bernstein's Age of Anxiety with Marin Alsop and the New York Symphony, and Leonard Slatkin and the London-based BBC Symphony orchestra.
Tocco's discography includes:
Recently, he performed a recording of Corigliano's Etude-Fantasy on Sony Classical.
In addition to his itinerary, Tocco is Eminent Scholar/Artist in Residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music and professor of piano at the Musikhochschule in Lübeck, Germany. Tocco is the co-founder and original artistic director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Co-founder is James Tocco's brother, Reverend Monsignor Anthony Tocco of St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic Church.
He is a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity. [1]
John Paul Corigliano Jr. is an American composer of contemporary classical music. With over 100 compositions, he has won accolades including a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Academy Award.
Eugene George Istomin was an American pianist. He was a winner of the Leventritt Award and recorded extensively as a soloist and in a piano trio in which he collaborated with Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose.
André Watts was an American classical pianist. Over the six decades of his career, Watts performed as soloist with every major American orchestra and most of the world's finest orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, and London Symphony Orchestra. Watts recorded a variety of repertoire, concentrating on Romantic era composers such as Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, but also including George Gershwin. In 2020, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. He won a Grammy Award for Best New Classical Artist in 1964. Watts was also on the faculty at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University.
Jerome Lowenthal is an American classical pianist. He has served as chair of the piano department at the Juilliard School in New York. Additionally, Lowenthal is on the faculty at Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California.
Alexis Sigismund Weissenberg was a Bulgarian-born French pianist.
Abbey Henry Simon was an American concert pianist, teacher, and recording artist. He was a protégé of Josef Hofmann at the Curtis Institute of Music and a winner of the Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1940. He was called a "supervirtuoso" by The New York Times.
Yeol Eum Son is a world renowned South Korean classical pianist. She is particularly esteemed as an interpreter of the Classical era of composers, especially Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, as well as such later composers as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Ravel.
Misha Dichter is an American pianist.
Christopher Chapman Rouse III was an American composer. Though he wrote for various ensembles, Rouse is primarily known for his orchestral compositions, including a Requiem, a dozen concertos, and six symphonies. His work received numerous accolades, including the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He also served as the composer-in-residence for the New York Philharmonic from 2012 to 2015.
Vox Records is a budget classical record label. The name is Latin for "voice."
Benjamin Grosvenor is a British classical pianist.
Eldar Nebolsin is an Uzbek-born classical pianist.
Ilana Vered is a concert pianist and professor of piano.
Peng-Peng Gong, formerly known as his stage name Peng Peng, is a Chinese classical composer and pianist born on July 3, 1992. Described by The Washington Post as an artist "with the confidence of a weathered veteran and a welcome unbridled quality to his playing", he has established himself as one of the most gifted young artists of his generation. At 18, he has become an internationally active concert pianist and a six-time American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers National Award-winning composer in consecutive years since 2006. He was among the youngest pianists to be officially signed to the artist roster of the renowned Opus 3 Artists in 2007 at age 14, and the youngest composer to be signed by the [Lauren Keiser Music Publishing] in 2009 at age 16. Since 2005, he concertized and toured intensely in the North America, South America, Europe, and China, appearing in over a hundred solo and orchestral engagements. He was invited twice, on personal request, by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to perform for the United States Congress.
Joseph Murray Banowetz was an American pianist, pedagogue, author, and editor, who taught at the University of North Texas. Banowetz was an expert on the music of the Russian romantic composer Anton Rubinstein.
Vardan Mamikonian is an Armenian pianist, and also a naturalised French citizen.
Joseph Kalichstein was an American classical pianist who performed in the concerto, solo recital and chamber music repertoire, the latter mainly with Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson in the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. He was also a professor at the Juilliard School in New York.
The Trombone Concerto is a concerto for trombone and orchestra by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its principal trombonist Joseph Alessi. It was completed on April 5, 1991, and was first performed by Alessi and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Slatkin on December 30, 1992, in Avery Fisher Hall, New York City. The concerto is dedicated to the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, who died suddenly October 14, 1990. In 1993, the work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Barbara Nissman is an American pianist. She is especially known for her interpretations and performances of the works of Alberto Ginastera and Sergei Prokofiev which feature prominently in her repertoire. She is also a writer and a producer of a new DVD series, and a guest clinician presenting concerts, master classes and lectures world-wide.
The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is a piano concerto by the American composer John Corigliano. The work was commissioned by the San Antonio Symphony and was first performed on April 7, 1968, by the pianist Hilde Somer and the San Antonio Symphony under the direction of Victor Alessandro. The piece is dedicated to John Atkins.