John Bell Young

Pianist John Bell Young, whose recordings of the music of Scriabin, Friedrich Nietzsche and others on the Newport Classics, Americus and Sony Classical labels have earned international critical acclaim, has performed throughout the US, Europe, Asia, and South America. He also performs frequently in Russia, where he has appeared on the concert series of the Scriabin Museum, the Glinka Cappella, the Sochi Philharmonic and the Riga Philharmonic (Latvia). He made his American recital debut at Washington's National Gallery of Art in 1976. The following year he performed on the concert series of Christchurch Spitalfields in London, the Koepelzaal in Amsterdam, and in 1983, the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. He is the subject of the 1977 Dutch television documentary, John Bell Young, Sweet Summer Concert, filmed in concert in the historic Koepelzaal and aboard an open tour-boat in the canals of Amsterdam. In July 2001 he was heard in recital at the prestigious Great Hall of the Forbidden City in Beijing, inaugurating the Poly-Culture International Piano Festival, sponsored by Volkswagen. Winner of the 1985 Chopin Foundation Council Prize in New York, Mr. Young is also a leading authority on the music of Alexander Scriabin. He was endorsed by Scriabin's daughters Marina and Yelena, and awarded a generous grant from the [Rockefeller] Trust for Mutual Understanding to lead the American delegation to the International Scriabin Conference and Festival in Moscow in 1992. His master classes and lectures have taken him to Brown University, the Juilliard School, the University of South Florida, and the Leningrad and Boston Conservatories. He is a prominent music critic whose columns for the American Record Guide, Opera News, Clavier, Classical DisCDigest, the St. Petersburg Times and the popular on-line publications Tower of Babel and Music and Vision are widely read. His principal teachers were Constance Keene, Margarita Fyodorova, Olga Barabini and Bruce Hungerford. He has coached with Claudio Arrau, John Browning, Shura Cherkassky, Vladimir Feltsman and Ernst Levy. John Bell Young is a frequent adjudicator for international competitions, including the Young Prince (Gelendzhik, Russia); the Russian American Music Association Competition (Boston); the International Russian Music Piano Competition (San Jose); the Greta Erikson European (Karlstad, Sweden); the Greta Erikson Nordic (Kils, Sweden); and the Premio Jaen (Spain). His CD, entitled 'Prisms', featuring music of Scriabin, Mahler, Michel Block, Leo Tolstoi, and Hugh Downs, was released by Americus Records in 2000. In October 2002 Americus Records will release his recording of Richard Strauss's unusual melodrama, Enoch Arden, for narrator and piano, where he is joined by the distinguished film and stage actor, Michael York. Mr. Young is also the founder and CEO of Identity Marketing for Concert Artists, Inc, a consultancy that produces recordings for numerous labels and concert artists.