Since his victory at the 1997 Naumburg International Piano Competition in New York City, Anthony Molinaro's stunning performances and unique versatility have captivated audiences and critics alike. Acclaimed for his "edge-of-the-seat brilliance" and "musically imaginative mind," Mr. Molinaro's performances have taken him to major music centers throughout the country including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and New York's Alice Tully Hall. He has been featured on Ravinia's Rising Stars Series, The Young Artist Series at the Kravis Center, The Santa Fe Jazz Festival, The Charles Vanda Master Series in Las Vegas, The Grand Teton Music Festival and Eastern Music Festival among many others. He has appeared as guest soloist with over fifty symphony orchestras including the Arkansas, Boise, Lake Forest, Louisville, Napa Valley, Naples, Richmond, and Syracuse Symphony Orchestras. He has also performed with the Canton, Cape Cod, Eugene, Flint, Savannah and Catskill Symphonies as well as with the Chicago Sinfonietta, Chicago Jazz Orchestra and Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra. Outside the U.S. Anthony has recently toured throughout France, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Canada.
In addition to his traditional concert repertoire, Mr. Molinaro is also a gifted composer and jazz artist, giving him a musical dimension uncommon to artists of his generation. He often plays his own cadenzas in Mozart and Beethoven concerti, and his "free-wheeling" and "unconventional" rendition of Rhapsody in Blue features improvised cadenzas. In November 2004 he premiered his first Piano Concerto with the Catskill Symphony and later that year debuted his band arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue with The Chicago Jazz Orchestra. Highlights of the 2010-2011 season included a two-week European tour with stops in Austria, Germany, Italy and Norway, a solo performance at The Toronto Jazz Festival, various performances with his quartet, as well as solo recitals in Chicago, North Carolina, Ohio and New York to celebrate the release of his new CD, Canto Per Mio Padre.
Mr. Molinaro records exclusively for Nineteen-Eight Records, a label he founded in 2001 to support creative music of all genres. His debut CD, The Bach Sessions features The Goldberg Variations and the F Minor and A Major Concertos with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Orchestra conducted by Andrew Litton. His wildly popular follow-up recording, New Blue, is a Gershwin album featuring his own solo version of Rhapsody in Blue as well as arrangements and improvisations on the Gershwin classics Summertime, Someone To Watch Over Me, Embraceable You, and I Got Rhythm. His collaboration with the harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy was highlighted by a live recording from the famed Green Mill Jazz Club in Chicago (The Molinaro-Levy Project - featured in the February 2004 issue of Downbeat Magazine) and his latest recording, Canto Per Mio Padre, features music of Schubert / Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Debussy.
Mr. Molinaro currently lives in his native Chicago where he is an Assistant Professor of Music at Loyola University. He studied at the University of North Texas and Northwestern University and has won several awards in addition to the Naumburg Prize, most notably the William C. Byrd International Piano Competition and the 1995 National Piano Fellowship from the American Pianist Association. When not concertizing, Anthony devotes considerable time to music education and for three summers coordinated a music program for physically challenged children in South Hampton, New York. He is also an avid runner and recently took up the sport of triathlon.
