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The American pianist, Anne-Marie McDermott, began playing the Piano at age 5. From the beginning, she realized that music was the most natural language for her, the one in which she could express the broadest range of human emotions. By 12 she had performed the Mendelssohn Concerto in G minor with the National Orchestral Association at Carnegie Hall. She studied at the Manhattan School of Music as a scholarship student with Dalmo Carra, Constance Keene and John Browning, and participated in master-classes with such highly respected Artists as Leon Fleisher, Menahem Pressler, Misha Dichter, Abbey Simon, Rosalyn Tureck, Michael Tilson Thomas and Mstislav Rostropovich. A winner of the Young Concert Artists Auditions, Anne-Marie McDermott was also the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Development Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, the Joseph Kalichstein Piano Prize, the Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize, the Bruce Hungerford Memorial Prize, and the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women Artists.
Aluminous, boldly emotive pianist who also conveys great sensitivity and spirituality through her playing, Anne-Marie McDermott is widely celebrated for her expressive performances on the world's most illustrious stages. A highly versatile musician, she is at home with a wide range of repertory, from Bach and Mozart to Prokofiev and Sergei Rachmaninov. As a solo recitalist, soloist with orchestra or as part of a chamber music ensemble, she conveys the message of the composer in deeply felt, spontaneous playing.
In 1992 Anne-Marie McDermott stepped in at the last moment as soloist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to play the Mozart Concerto K. 466 for an indisposed Murray Perahia. Her performance of this concerto the previous year, with the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra, had won her the Silver Medal in Japan's First Hamamatsu Piano Competition. In the spring of 1995, she returned to Japan for her debut recital tour, and will return there in 2004. Her 1997 debut with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Christian Thielemann was a great success and has been followed in recent seasons by highly successful performances with such orchestras as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Columbus Symphony and others. She toured to 13 American cities with the Australian Chamber Orchestra during the 1999-2000 season with an unusual program of Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten.
Performances earlier in her career included Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, Hans Graf conducting; the Hong Kong Philharmonic under David Atherton; the Kennedy Center with Gerard Schwarz; the Brandenburg Ensemble under Alexander Schneider at Kennedy Center in Washington; the Moscow Virtuosi with Vladimir Spivakov at Boston's Symphony Hall and New York's Avery Fisher Hall; and the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. Her numerous recital engagements have included New York's 92nd Street Y and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and San Francisco's Herbst Theatre.
Highlights of Anne-Marie McDermott's past two seasons (2004-2006) have included numerous solo recitals and orchestral appearances: with the Guarneri String Quartet on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Concert & Lecture Series; as soloist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra; continued performances as an Artist Member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; as a member of the Stage One jury of Honens International Piano Competition; and duo performances with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. She recently performed S. Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Nashville Symphony, Robert Bernhardt conducting, and was guest soloist with the Memphis Symphony, the Chattanooga Symphony and the Virginia Symphony, among others. With the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she had a special collaboration with the Miami String Quartet, performing Dohnanyi's Piano Quintet No. 1.
A passionate champion of the music of Prokofiev, Anne-Marie McDermott continues her association with this demanding repertory, performing the complete cycle of sonatas at the Lincoln Center Festival in July 2003. She performed this cycle at the University of Arizona (including a master-class, panel discussion and outreach event), in February 2003; at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon (the complete Piano sonatas plus chamber music works), in March 2003; and at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall (the complete sonatas) in May 2003. She finished recording the complete cycle of sonatas and chamber works for Arabesque Recordings, with the first three volumes to be released in July 2003. The remaining volumes (4-6) will be released between 2004 and 2006. In the spring of 2001 she released a critically praised all-Bach recording on the GMN label.
Sought after by major festivals such as Mainly Mozart, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Angel Fire, and Bravo Vail Valley, Anne-Marie McDermott regularly performs recitals and chamber concerts throughout the USA and abroad. She has appeared at many other festivals including Santa Fe, Spoleto, Chamber Music Northwest, Newport, the Dubrovnik Festival in the former Yugoslavia, and the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico. |
