Pianist Michael Mizrahi to give Music at the Forefront concert

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Pianist Michael Mizrahi will perform at Bowling Green State University on Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. in Bryan Recital Hall at the Moore Musical Arts Center. The concert is free and open to the public, and features works by Judd Greenstein, Missy Mazzoli, Patrick Burke, Mark Dancigers, Asha Srinivasan, Ludwig van Beethoven and Béla Bartók. The performance is presented as part of the Music at the Forefront concert series sponsored by BGSU’s MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music.

Mizrahi has won acclaim for his compelling performances of a wide-ranging repertoire and his ability to connect with audiences of all ages. He has appeared as concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and teaching artist across the United States and abroad.

He won First Prize and the Audience Choice Award in the Ima Hogg International Competition, as well as first prizes in the International Bartók-Kabalevsky Competition and the Iowa International Piano Competition.

Dedicated to the music of our time, Mizrahi has commissioned and given world premieres of several new works for piano and frequently collaborates with composers and instrumentalists in the performance of 21st-century music. He is a founding member of NOW Ensemble, a chamber group devoted to the commissioning and performing of new music by emerging composers. NOW Ensemble released its second album, “Awake,” to critical acclaim in 2011. Mizrahi released “The Bright Motion,” an album of newly commissioned works for solo piano, on the New Amsterdam Records label in May 2012. His music video by the same name was lauded by National Public Radio and New Yorker music critic Alex Ross.

Mizrahi was a founding member of the Moët Trio, which performed in major venues across the United States and Canada, and established itself as one of today’s most exciting young piano trios. The Moët Trio recently completed a two-year residency, the only one of its kind for piano trios, at the New England Conservatory.

Mizrahi received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, where his concentrations were in music, religion and physics. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Claude Frank. After his Philadelphia debut recital, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that “… the performance had transparency, revealing a forward-moving logic and chord voices you didn’t previously realize were there … textures were sumptuous.”

He is currently assistant professor of piano at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wisc.

Music at the Forefront is an annual concert series featuring performances by accomplished and innovative performers of contemporary music. For more information, contact Kurt Doles at 419-372-2685 or kdoles@bgsu.edu.