Tahoe Music Alive presents Awadagin Pratt at the Piano

Get Ready for the Awadagin Pratt!

Tahoe Music Alive is honored to present Awadagin Pratt in concert on May 30 at Olympic Valley Chapel, offering an intimate encounter with one of the most compelling and distinctive pianists of our time.

Through a career that encompasses performance, conducting, education, and artistic leadership, Awadagin Pratt has become a powerful advocate for musical storytelling—shining light on voices of the past while championing today’s most imaginative creators. Since winning the Naumburg International Piano Competition in 1992 and receiving a 1994 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Pratt has earned widespread acclaim for performances described by The Washington Post as “forceful, imaginative, and precisely tinted,” and hailed by WGBH as among the great American pianists and conductors of our era.

Pratt’s performance career has taken him from the world’s most prestigious concert halls to unexpected cultural touchstones. He has appeared as soloist with major orchestras including the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras and the New York Philharmonic, and in solo recitals at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center. His artistry has been welcomed everywhere from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, at the invitation of multiple U.S. presidents, to Sesame Street, reflecting both his musical excellence and broad cultural reach. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with artists such as Zuill Bailey, Simone Dinnerstein, and the Harlem and St. Lawrence String Quartets.

Equally committed to new music and interdisciplinary projects, Pratt’s 2023 recording Stillpoint explores T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets through newly commissioned works by composers including Tyshawn Sorey, Jessie Montgomery, Paola Prestini, and Judd Greenstein. His creative response to the murder of George Floyd resulted in Awadagin Pratt: Black in America, a deeply personal multimedia work that fuses classical music, film, and spoken narrative to examine race, identity, and lived experience in the United States. A documentary version of the project was screened at film festivals nationwide in 2023.

Beyond the piano, Pratt is an accomplished conductor, currently serving as principal conductor of the Miami Valley Symphony Orchestra, and having led ensembles including Bang on a Can and the Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh. His dedication to nurturing future artists is evident through his leadership of the Next Generation Festival, the Art of the Piano Foundation, and the Nina Simone Piano Competition, which celebrates diversity in classical music. After two decades at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, he now serves as professor of piano at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

This concert at Olympic Valley Chapel promises an evening of depth, insight, and luminous musicianship—an opportunity to experience an artist who continues to shape the future of classical music while honoring its rich traditions.