August 3, 2017

The music program welcomes Marcantonio Barone to Drexel this coming spring for a piano masterclass and guest performance with the Drexel University Orchestra.

American pianist Marcantonio Barone has given solo recitals at the Metropolitan Museum and Weill Recital Hall in New York, at the National Gallery in Washington, on the recital series of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, at the Ravinia Festival and San Francisco’s Midsummer Mozart Festival, at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Rachmaninoff Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, and the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Filarmoniya, and in various cities in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Malta.  In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, he frequently performed as soloist with major orchestras on four continents, in collaboration with such conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Sergiu Comissiona, Leon Fleisher, Arthur Fiedler, Barry Tuckwell, Antonio de Almeida, and Vladimir Ziva. 

He has given the world premieres of works for piano by Richard Brodhead, David Finko, Ulysses Kay, Gerald Levinson, Philip Maneval, George Rochberg, Andrew Rudin, and Melinda Wagner.  As a member of Orchestra 2001, he was the pianist for the first performances and recordings of the seven volumes of George Crumb’s monumental American Songbook.  With the musicians of Orchestra 2001, he has performed in Russia, Denmark, Great Britain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and China, introducing recent American works to international audiences.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Barone performs as a member of the Lenape Chamber Ensemble, 1807 and Friends, the Casimir Trio, and the Craftsbury Chamber Players, and at the Delaware Chamber Music Festival.  He also appears frequently as a guest artist with the Wister Quartet.       

He is head of the piano department and assistant director of the Bryn Mawr Conservatory of Music, where he has taught since 1980.  He is also an Associate in Performance at Swarthmore College, where he teaches piano, keyboard musicianship, and chamber music.

Marcantonio Barone studied with Eleanor Sokoloff at the Curtis Institute of Music and with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he was awarded the Artist Diploma in 1985.  Among his other teachers were Harriet Elsom Rothstein, Taylor Redden, Susan Starr, and Leonard Shure.

Mr. Barone is a Steinway Artist.  His recordings are available on the Albany, Bridge, Capstone, and CRI labels.  He and violinist Barbara Govatos received the 2012 Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artist Award of the Classical Recording Foundation for their recording of Beethoven’s ten sonatas for violin and piano.