Pianist/Composer Leon Gurvitch Makes His Weill Recital Hall At Carnegie Hall Debut

Pianist/composer LEON GURVITCH will make his Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall debut with a program of works by Bach, Gershwin, and Piazzolla, as well as his own compositions, Saturday March 18, 2017 at 8 PM. Presented by Leon Gurvitch.

Born into a musical family in Minsk, Belarus, Gurvitch studied piano, violin, and oboe, and graduated as a conductor from the Belarussian Music Academy, continuing his studies at the Music and Theatre Academy in Hamburg, Germany. Since 2001, he has been a resident of Hamburg where, in addition to his international touring and concertizing, he is an assistant professor at the Johannes Brahms Conservatory. As a composer, he has authored more than 300 compositions and arrangements of orchestral, chamber, vocal, choral and solo instrumental compositions. His creative roots are in the classics, where he cites Stravinsky, Ravel, Scriabin, Bernstein and Brubeck as a few of his influences, and his compositions also find inspiration in music of the Far East, Latin America, Klezmer, Russian folk, jazz and world music.

In 2001 Gurvitch founded the Leon Gurvitch Project, conceived as a musical genre-crossing ensemble with outstanding musicians, influenced from many corners of the world. His versatility was further demonstrated as composer for the 2001 film "Death Game," by Oscar-nominated Menahem Golan. Gurvitch conducted the 2011 Hamburg premiere of Phillip Glass's opera "Les Enfants Terribles." Other credits include collaborations with the Hamburg State Opera, NDR Symphonic Orchestra, and legendary German theatre director Peter Zadek. In Berlin in 2006, the artist was awarded the international prize the Golden Chanukkia.

Gurvitch's first album, Eldorado" was released in 2010 and featured Grammy Award-winner Frank London of The Klezmatics, followed in 2014 by a solo piano CD "Remember Me," both released by Morgenland/Naxos. In 2015, Gurvitch's "5 Dances in Old Style" for string orchestra was performed by the Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra of Frankfurt at a Berlin benefit entitled "Classic for Peace." The composer's other works have been performed throughout the world, including the Kennedy Center in D.C., the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Moscow Tschaikovsky Conservatory, and the Cite des Arts in Paris. In 2015 Gurvitch was nominated for the Hamburg Music Award as 'Musician of the Year."