Gilles Vonsattel

piano

Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is an artist of extraordinary versatility and originality. He’s the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, the winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions, and a laureate of the Cleveland, Dublin, and Honens competitions. He’s appeared with the Munich Philharmonic, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, and Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Montreal, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, and he’s appeared in recital and chamber music concerts at the Ravinia, Lucerne, Bravo! Vail Music, and Santa Fe Chamber Music festivals; Chamber Music Northwest; Music@Menlo; Tokyo’s Musashino Hall; and London’s Wigmore Hall.

Vonsattel has premiered numerous works both in the United States and Europe, and he’s worked closely with numerous notable composers, including Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, Anthony Cheung, and George Benjamin. Recent projects include a performance of Carlos Chávez’s Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium with The Orchestra Now, a debut at Mainly Mozart in San Diego, a critically acclaimed recording of music of Richard Strauss and Kurt Leimer with The Bern Symphony Orchestra and Mario Venzago for the Schweizer Fonogramm label, and multiple appearances with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. During the summer of 2022, Vonsattel appeared at seven of the United States’ most prestigious chamber music festivals.

Gilles Vonsattel is an alumnus of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and his master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Vonsattel is a professor of piano at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and serves on the faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. He makes his home in New York City.