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Pianist Joel Fan is one of the most dynamic and accomplished musicians performing before the public today. He is consistently acclaimed for his recitals, recordings, and appearances with orchestras throughout the world. His concerts attract a wide range of audiences, as he has eagerly embraced traditional piano literature as well as an eclectic range of repertoire, including new music commissioned especially for him, world music and his own transcriptions. Mr. Fan’s engaging personality, technical assurance, lyricism and sheer musicality win over audiences wherever he performs. As a recording artist, Mr. Fan scored two consecutive Billboard Top 10 Debuts with his solo CDs World Keys and West of the Sun.
Mr. Fan’s recent notable concerts include his acclaimed 2008 New York Debut Recital at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for which the New York Times remarked upon his “probing intellect and vivid imagination.” He performed a celebratory concert upon the release of his CD West of the Sun in April 2009, at the popular nightclub Le Poisson Rouge, also in New York City. Of that performance, the New York Times noted: “Mr. Fan has a big sound and a powerful touch .. His playing was the picture of textural clarity… played with the sparkle and rhythmic suppleness of a jazz improviser. Mr. Fan said this was his first club performance, but he had the patter down.”
In collaboration with the renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma as a member of the Silk Road Ensemble, Joel Fan has appeared in numerous venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and on the popular nationally-televised programs Good Morning America and Late Night with David Letterman. He also shared the stage with Mr. Ma for performances of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of David Zinman.
Mr. Fan has appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras throughout the world, including the New York Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, Singapore Symphony, New Symphony Orchestra of Bulgaria, and Odessa Philharmonic, among others. In addition to Maestro Zinman, his performances with conductors include Alan Gilbert, Zubin Mehta, David Alan Miller, Gustav Meier, and David Robertson.
Mr. Fan’s debut album World Keys was released in 2006 on the Reference Recordings label and became a classical music best-seller, charting at #3 on Billboard’s Classical Chart. The repertoire takes listeners to distant lands, and includes world premiere recordings of several composers, including Dia Succari, Qigang Chen, and Peteris Vasks, as well as traditional repertoire from Liszt, Prokofiev, and Schumann. Mr. Fan’s follow-up album, West of the Sun, was released in April 2009, and also landed on the Billboard Top 10. West of the Sun, a collection of music from the Americas, includes pieces by South American composers Nazareth, Ginastera, Villa-Lobos and Piazzola, as well as Amy Beach, William Bolcom and Samuel Barber. Gramophone described the album as “a well performed and diverse disc that brilliantly demonstrates Fan’s versatility.”
As a “champion of new music” (Boston Globe), Mr. Fan is passionate about expanding the repertoire written for the piano, having embarked on a multi-year commissioning project of several solo piano and concerto works. In 2006, he commissioned, performed and recorded the world premiere of Leon Kirchner’s Sonata No. 3, “The Forbidden”. In 2009, Mr. Fan made the world premiere recording of William Bolcom’s “Nine New Bagatelles”, heard on West of the Sun.
Joel Fan began his performing career with the New York Philharmonic at age 11, as a winner of the Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concert Auditions. A native New Yorker, he studied at the Juilliard Pre-College Division as a student of Katherine Parker and Martin Canin. He received his Bachelor degree from Harvard University, where his teachers included the composer Leon Kirchner. He holds a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Leon Fleisher. He is also a prize winner of several international competitions, including the Busoni International Piano Competition in Italy. He was also the winner of the Kosciuzko Foundation’s Chopin Prize and named a Presidential Scholar by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.
Joel Fan is a Steinway Artist. |
