Jonathan Biss

Jonathan Biss (born September 18, 1980) is an American pianist, teacher, and writer based in Philadelphia. He is the co-artistic director (with Mitsuko Uchida) of the Marlboro Music Festival. Early life and education Biss was born into a family of musicians in Bloomington, Indiana. His paternal step-grandmother was one of the first well-known female cellists, the Russian cellist Raya Garbousova, for whom Samuel Barber wrote his cello concerto. His parents, Miriam Fried and Paul Biss, are both violinists. His older brother Daniel is a politician serving as the mayor of Evanston, Illinois. After studying at Indiana University, where both his parents taught, Biss entered the Curtis Institute of Music at age 17 to study with Leon Fleisher. Interviewed by The New York Times in 2011 in the run-up to Biss's Carnegie Hall debut recital, Fleisher said of his pupil: <blockquote>His ability and interest go for things of transcendence and sublimeness. That made a great impression on me. He took a very healthy road that started with chamber music, both with his mother and then more extensively at places like Ravinia and Marlboro, and he got to be known by the elders in the profession as somebody to look out for.</blockquote> Career Biss made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the 92nd Street Y. In early 2001, he performed with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Kurt Masur. His European career was launched in 2002 when he became the first American to be selected as a BBC New Generation Artist, winning a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award the following year. He made his recital debut at Carnegie Hall in January 2011.