Jonathan Biss

Pianist Jonathan Biss is recognized globally for his “impeccable taste and a formidable technique” (The New Yorker). Praised by The Boston Globe as “an eloquent and insightful music writer,” Biss published his fourth book, Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven, in 2020. The book was the first Audible Original by a classical musician and one of Audible’s top audiobooks of the year.

Throughout the 2024–2025 season, Biss will continue his ongoing project pairing Schubert’s last sonatas with new compositions by Alvin Singleton, Tyson Gholston Davis, and Tyshawn Sorey, including performances at the Frederic Chopin Society in St. Paul, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Meany Center in Washington, and more. He appears with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Xian Zhang, the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Jakub Hrůša, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Biss will also join the Doric String Quartet for dates in Denmark before performing with Liza Ferschtman, Malin Broman, and Antoine Lederlin in Madrid, Helsinki, and throughout the Netherlands.

Biss has appeared as a soloist with some of the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and more. He has served as the Co-Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival alongside pianist Mitsuko Uchida since 2018. He served on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music for ten years and has been a guest professor at schools such as the Guildhall SOMAD and the New England Conservatory of Music. As the author of Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven, he examines music and his life’s journey through the lens of Beethoven’s last piano sonatas.

Throughout his career, Biss has collaborated with a wide range of esteemed musicians, from Mark Padmore to Midori. In the 2023–2024 season, he joined the critically acclaimed Brentano String Quartet and double bassist Joseph Conyers for a tour of Beethoven’s late works and Schubert’s Trout Quintet. In the spring of 2024, Biss joined forces with fellow pianist Mitsuko Uchida to highlight Schubert’s four-hand piano music in a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Princeton University, and Schenectady’s Union College, following an international tour to London, Dublin, and at the Salzburg, San Sebastian, and Gstaad Festivals. An advocate of newly commissioned works, Biss most recently collaborated with composers Alvin Singleton, Tyshawn Sorey, and Tyson Gholson Davis for his Schubert commissioning project, which he presented at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, San Francisco Performances, and the Ravinia Festival in the 2023–2024 season.