Winner of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant for 2009, Alessio Bax is universally praised for his lyrical playing and insightful interpretations. Since taking first prize at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan at age 19 and the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in 2000, Bax has won audiences across the globe. Acclaimed by the international press, his performances have been described as “real music-making that makes its own world on stage and invites the audience in as guests” (The Independent), and “successfully combining authority and poetry” (Daily Telegraph).

Alessio Bax’s extensive concerto repertoire has led to appearances with over 80 orchestras including the London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National, Dallas Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Houston Symphony, Rome Symphony, Hungarian Symphony, NHK Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, and New Japan Philharmonic. He has worked with a number of esteemed conductors such as Marin Alsop, Alexander Dimitriev, Jonathan Nott, Vernon Handley, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Ken-ichiro Kobayashi, Dimitry Sitkovetsky and Sir Simon Rattle.

Bax’s festival appearances include London’s International Piano Series (Queen Elizabeth Hall), the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, England’s Aldeburgh and Bath festivals, the Ruhr Klavierfestival, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, BeethovenFest, and Musikfestspiele Saar in Germany. He has performed in recital at music halls in Rome, Milan, Madrid, Paris, London, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, New York, Washington DC, and Mexico City. Also an active chamber musician, he has collaborated with Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, Andrés Diaz and Nobuko Imai, among others. He joins Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two residency program for outstanding artists for three seasons beginning in 2009-10.

His 2004 recording for Warner Classics, Baroque Reflections, received rave reviews and was selected as “Editor's Choice” by Gramophone magazine. In 2003, Bax and Lucille Chung recorded the complete works for two pianos and piano-for-four-hands of György Ligeti on Dynamic Records. In 2005, they recorded Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals with conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He has recorded the complete works for piano and organ of Marcel Dupré on Naxos, and Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, live with the New Japan Philharmonic, for Fontec. Also on Fontec, Bax released a live recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Hamamatsu Symphony Orchestra. His latest recording, Bach Transcribed, will be released by Signum Records in 2009.

In 2005, Alessio Bax was selected to play the Fugue of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata for Maestro Daniel Barenboim in Barenboim on Beethoven. The documentary was produced by Channel 13/PBS, in conjunction with Bel Air Media, BBC, and NHK Japan. It was broadcast worldwide and released as a DVD box set in 2006 on the EMI label. His performances are often broadcast live on the BBC, CBC (Canada), RAI (Italy), RTVE (Spain), NHK (Japan), WDR, NDR and Bayerische Rundfunk (Germany), Hungarian Radio Television, Serbian RTE, among others.

Alessio Bax graduated with top honors at the record age of 14 from the conservatory of his hometown, Bari, Italy. He studied in France with François-Joël Thiollier, and attended the Chigiana Academy in Siena under Joaquín Achúcarro. He moved to Dallas in 1994 to continue his studies with Achúcarro at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts. He is now on the teaching faculty there. He and his wife, pianist Lucille Chung, reside in New York City.

Listen: Brahms: Hungarian Dance No. 5 (live)


Listen: Bach/arr. Rachmaninov: Gavotte from Partita for solo violin (track 12 - Baroque Reflections; Warner)

"Intently modern" (NY Times) jazz pianist and composer Dan Tepfer plays a selection of variations from J.S. Bach's seminal work and adds to it his own commentary, in the form of improvisations on each variation

Critics have called New York-based pianist/composer Dan Tepfer "brilliant" (the Boston Globe), "a remarkable musician" (The Washington Post) and "certainly among those clearly willing to play with familiar formulas and take new approaches, even as he incorporates strokes from the masters" (Jazzreview.com). While he has played with some of the great names in jazz — Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Bob Brookmeyer and Charles McPherson, to name a few — he strives to create music that is distinctly of our time.

Born in Paris, France, in 1982 to American parents, Tepfer started classical piano studies at the age of six at the Paris Conservatoire Paul Dukas. He soon began to explore improvisation on his own and remained largely self-taught in jazz into his college years. After earning a bachelor’s in astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he also played extensively on the jazz scene and enjoyed a brief stint as an opera conductor, he was offered a scholarship to complete his master’s in jazz at the New England Conservatory in Boston under the guidance of Danilo Pérez. Graduating with honors in 2005, he moved to New York City, where he is in demand as a pianist, composer and educator.

His work has been recognized with a number of recent awards, including the first prize and audience prize at the 2006 Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition, the first prize at the 2006 East Coast Jazz Festival Competition, and the first prize at the 2007 competition of the American Pianists Association — leading him to be named the 2007-2009 Cole Porter Fellow in Jazz.

His new release, OXYGEN, follows his acclaimed debut Before the Storm, which was voted one of the top ten CDs of 2005 by Cadence Magazine. Both albums feature his longstanding trio with bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Richie Barshay (whom Tepfer shares with Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea). The group has been noted for its exceptional chemistry on stage, which reflects its more than four years of international touring. Dan also pursues an active solo career, with a recent focus on full concerts of freely improvised music. He has been named a Cultural Envoy of the U.S. State Department, with recent travels to Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Czech Republic.

Actively involved in jazz education, Dan has given lectures and master classes in universities and conservatories throughout the world. These include the Royal Academy of Music (London), the Seoul Institute of the Arts (South Korea), the Chopin Conservatory (Warsaw), the Swiss Jazz School (Bern, Switzerland), and the SMU Meadows School of the Arts (Dallas, Texas), among many others.

Recent or upcoming engagements include Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall with Jeff Ballard and Chris Cheek, New York’s Jazz Gallery and Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola with Lee Konitz, the Indianapolis Jazz Festival and the Kennedy Center with his trio, and solo concerts at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Radio France Festival in Montpellier, and the Fazioli Salon in New York City.