Tzimon Barto
EUR
Full Biography
Acclaimed as one of the foremost American pianists performing today, Barto is applauded throughout the world for his exciting and highly individual concerts. His technical command and outstanding independent musicality – recently documented with two albums on the Ondine label - are a guarantee for heightened attention among music connoisseurs and critics.

Born and raised in Eustis Florida, USA, the son of Evelyn and Johnny Smith, Barto received his first piano lesson from his grandmother Thelma Smith at the age of five.

He studied at Rollins College, the Brevard Music Center and the Julliard of Music School in New York, where his piano teacher was the legendary Adele Marcus. Barto won the Gina Bachauer Competition for pianists two consecutive times. But he originally wanted to become a conductor and when he attended the Tanglewood Institute with that goal in mind, he was rewarded ‘Most Outstanding Student’ for his achievements as a young conductor. He later worked as a conducting fellow and coach for the American Opera Center, making his European Debut in 1985 at Spoleto Festival as both a conductor and pianist.

Barto entered the international stage as a pianist in the mid 1980’s with appearances at the Salzburg Festival and the Vienna Musikverein at the invitation of Herbert von Karajan. In the more than two decades since, he has performed with nearly every major international orchestra from NHK Tokyo to the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, to name just a few.

Conductors and artists with whom Tzimon Barto has performed include Lorin Maazel, James Conlon, Válclav Neumann, Zdeněk Mácal, Valery Gergiev, Marin Alsop, Jiri Belohlavek, Joan Falletta, Sir Neville Marriner, Raymond Leppard, Christian Thielemann, Christa Ludwig, Shirley Verrett, Katia Ricciarelli, Heinrich Schiff, Julia Fischer, Martha Argerich, Andrew Davis, Dennis Russell Davies and Emanuel Ax etc.

He has recorded 13 albums, many of them on EMI, and recently on the Ondine label, available through the international sites of Amazon.com. A Haydn and a Schubert recording are planned for release during 2009, as is a Schumann CD with NDR Hamburg.

In the upcoming 2009/2010 season, Barto will perform in Spain, Poland, China, Germany and Austria. He will return to the Ravinia Festival to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra next summer as well as to the Salzburg Festival performing with the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach.

A linguist, Barto speaks fluently five languages and reads ancient Hebrew, Greek and Latin. He is currently studying Mandarin. For the past twenty years, Barto has been working on a Gesamtkunstwerk, "The Stelae," an epic of numerous poems and several novels, based as much on Biblical hermeneutics and music-theoretical techniques as on various styles of contemporary literary narrative. "The Stelae" will be given its ultimate "translation" in a permanent visual installation on a thirty-five-acreage plot of land in Central Florida.

Several excerpts from "The Stelae" have been translated and published in 2008 under his pen name, Barto Smith. These include a collection of elegies, "a lady of Greek origin," performed onstage in Frankfurt and Vienna, and newly reissued with a DVD, as well as a novella, "Dot, a lyrical scene," which was published by Germany’s Achilla Press in March 2009. His new novel, Harold Flanders, will be issued in October 2009 by Odium Press in London. His musical explorations extend into the field of physics, specifically, a new systematization of the chemical element’s spectral lines. His design of a reform schooling project on re-introducing U.S students to the arts and ancient language has been approved by the public school board in Lake County, the area where Mr. Barto grew up, and will be implanted by a pilot school in the fall 2010.

Tzimon Barto has always been actively involved in contemporary music and created the Barto Prize to foster and promote the composition and performance of new music. This biennial award was established in 2005 by the Lake Eustis Institute in Florida and is honoured to unpublished compositions for piano solo based on a literary work.

Barto, 46, lives in Central Florida.


2009/10

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