Christopher Taylor Plays Brahms

Kazem Abdullah works internationally and excels at reaching newer and diverse audiences, conducting concerts and operas in a wide variety of styles and formats. 

Abdullah opened this season leading a new production of Anthony Davis’ X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X at the Metropolitan Opera, a production the New York Times called “an American classic.” Abdullah continues his  season with debuts with the Naples Philharmonic, Kansas City Symphony, and North Carolina Symphony and return engagements with the Indianapolis Symphony and the Seattle Opera. 

Abdullah has delivered resonant performances of masterworks new and old, and continues to champion American composers and artists while pursuing innovative, community-based concert design. Committed to expanding the American repertoire, Kazem has led the premieres of several significant American operatic works including Rhiannon Gidden’s Omar, Gregory Spears Castor and Patience, and additional works by John Luther Adams, Caroline Shaw, Anthony Davis, George Lewis, Dai Fujikura, and Daniel Bernard Roumain. 

On the podium, Abdullah is recognized by orchestras and audiences alike for his impressive conducting technique, thoughtful interpretations, innovative concert experiences and engaging presence. Among his recent orchestral credits are the Oregon, Indianapolis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Seattle and Cincinnati symphony orchestras. In addition to his symphony engagements, he recently conducted an opera Gala for the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the American premiere of Charles Wuorinen’s opera Brokeback Mountain, Tosca for Seattle Opera, and Hänsel und Gretel for Cape Town Opera. 

Abdullah currently lives in Nürnberg, Germany, and was the Generalmusikdirektor in Aachen, Germany, from 2012 to 2017. During his tenure in Aachen, in addition to reaching newer and diverse audiences through innovative programming, moving out of the concert hall, and experimenting with juxtapositions of styles in non-traditional concert formats, he also conducted over 25 operas. He collaborated with musicians such as Johannes Moser, Lise de la Salle, Angela Gheorghiu, Augustin Haedelich, and Midori. 

Prior to 2012, Abdullah led the Orquestra de São Paulo on its third United States coast-to-coast tour and the New World Symphony at the Ives In-Context Festival by special invitation from Michael Tilson Thomas. He also conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in collaboration with the Mark Morris Dance Group. He was also an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, where he assisted and prepared over twenty operas, including Der Ring des Nibelungen, Wozzeck, and Lulu. Abdullah has also guest conducted at companies such as the Atlanta Opera, Portland Opera, Detroit Opera,Opéra national de Lorraine and the Théâtre du Châtelet de Paris. Abdullah made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2009, conducting Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. 

Trained as a clarinetist, Abdullah has performed extensively as an orchestral musician, chamber musician, and soloist. He spent two seasons as a member of the New World Symphony and performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra, as well as the chamber ensembles Trio Wanderer and the Auryn Quartet. 

A dedicated educator, Abdullah has worked with student orchestras at the Interlochen Arts Center, the Oklahoma Arts Institute, die Höchschule für Musik Cologne Standort Aachen, the Juilliard School, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Manhattan School of Music Germany, and the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. He was awarded the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award by his alma mater, Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where he worked with the students there and spoke at their commencement in 2015. 

Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Christopher Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests.  He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti, and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks. Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Mr. Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace. 

Mr. Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to Russia, Western Europe, East Asia, and the Carribean. At home in the U.S. he has appeared with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic,  Detroit Symphony, and the Milwaukee Symphony.  As a soloist he has performed in New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other venues. In chamber settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians, including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying Quartets. His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen, and present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel. Throughout his career Mr. Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects.  Examples include: an upcoming tour in which he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies by Liszt;  performances and lectures on the complete etudes of György Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.  He has actively promoted the rediscovery and refurbishment of the latter instrument; in recent years he has also been building a reinvented and modernized version of it, a project that relies on his computer and engineering skills and was unveiled in a demonstration recital in 2016. 

Numerous awards have confirmed Mr. Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award. 

Mr. Taylor owes much of his success to several outstanding teachers, including Russell Sherman, Maria Curcio-Diamand, Francisco Aybar, and Julie Bees. In addition to his busy concert schedule, he currently serves as Paul Collins Associate Professor of Piano Performance at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He pursues a variety of other interests, including: mathematics (he received a summa cum laude degree from Harvard University in this field in 1992); philosophy (an article he coauthored with the leading scholar Daniel Dennett appears in the Oxford Free Will Handbook); computing; linguistics; and biking, which is his primary means of commuting. Mr. Taylor lives in Middleton, Wisconsin, with his wife and two daughters. Christopher Taylor is a Steinway artist.