Brian Ganz will be our conference artist this year. Mr. Ganz is widely regarded as one of the leading pianists of his generation.  Washington Post critic Joan Reinthaler has written: “One comes away from a recital by pianist Brian Ganz not only exhilarated by the power of the performance but also moved by his search for artistic truth.”

Mr. Ganz is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Leon Fleisher.  Gifted as a teacher himself, Mr. Ganz is Artist-in-Residence at St. Mary's College of Maryland, where he has been a member of the piano faculty since 1986, and in 2000 he joined the piano faculty of the Peabody Conservatory.

Brian Ganz was winner of one of two First Grand Prizes awarded in the 1989 Marguerite Long Jacques Thibaud International Piano Competition in Paris, where he was also awarded special prizes for the best recital round of the competition and the best performance of the required work. That same year he won a Beethoven Fellowship awarded by the American Pianists Association, and in 1991 he was a silver medalist with third prize in the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Piano Competition. 

In addition to presenting a Saturday evening recital, Brian will teach a master class on Sunday for students.