Andrew Tyson

Hailed by BBC Radio 3 as “a real poet of the piano”, the American pianist Andrew Tyson, born in 1985, is emerging as a distinctive new musical voice. On the eve of the 2015-2016 season, he captured First Prize and the Mozart Prize at the Concours Géza Anda in Zurich, where his performance of Chopin’s First Piano Concerto, accompanied by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, also brought him the Audience Prize.

After early studies at the University of North Carolina, Tyson attended the Curtis Institute of Music, where he attended the class of Claude Frank. He later earned his Master’s degree and Artist Diploma at the Juilliard School under Robert McDonald.

Tyson has also won prizes at the Arthur Rubinstein Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. At the 2012 Leeds International Piano Competition, Tyson was given the new Terence Judd-Hallé Award by the Hallé Orchestra and its conductor Sir Mark Elder. This Award brought with it further invitations to perform with the Hallé.

Innumerable concerts are planned for Tyson as a result of his First Prize in the Concours Géza Anda, including with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Orchestra of German Radio SWR and the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra. He will also be giving his debuts at the Lucerne Piano Festival, the Bad Kissingen Summer, the Warsaw Easter Festial and the Joensuu Music Festival in Finland. Thanks to a cooperation with Steinway & Sons Hamburg, Bavarian Radio in Munich will in March 2016 make a studio production with Tyson of Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 467, accompanied by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.

In 2014, Tyson released his first CD on the Zig-Zag Territories label, featuring Chopin’s Preludes.