Brightmusic Society of Oklahoma presents:
 

Koji Attwood

Critics have raved about pianist Koji Attwood’s “ice-water” clarity and his “ability to create beautiful transparent textures and evanescent splashes of color.” In a performance with Thomas Kraines, cellist for the Peabody trio, the Raleigh News & Observer commented, “If they were listening in for a clue to the future, the ghosts of Casals and Serkin must have smiled.” A Kansas native, he is a winner of Astral Artistic Services’ 2003 National Auditions and was the featured artist in May 2003 on yamahamusicsoft.com’s New York City Rising Star Series. Astral featured him during the 2004 season in a concert at Philadelphia’s new National Constitution Center—a performance of the Dvořák Piano Quintet that had the Philadelphia Inquirer state, “Koji Attwood found detailed narrative to the piece’s expansive sense of sequential repetitions…and floated enough interpretive ideas that [made] the piece seem epic without becoming bloated.”  A 2005 concert in Boca Raton, Florida elicited this response: "He [Attwood] displayed a love of the grand Romantic gesture.  Huge sound, high emotion, and an instinct for sharply etched color. He also is a pianist of impressive technique, a player who can rattle off scalar figurations with aplomb and dazzle and still make room in his palette for the simplicity of the thematic line.”  The Philadelphia Inquirer was moved to exclaim that, “Koji Attwood…arrived like a bolt of genius…he was sytlish and wonderfuly fluid.  His was a performance that was both deeply thought and felt,”and Jay Nordlinger of the New York Sun recently praised his “true-blue Romanticism.”

Mr. Attwood made his solo debut at the age of ten and one year later won second prize at the Young Keyboard Artists Association International Competition. He claimed second prize at both the Stravinsky and the Missouri Southern International Keyboard Competitions, and was a participant at the International William Kapell Keyboard Competition and the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition.  Most recently, he was an honorary mention award winner of the Seventh International Web Concert Hall Competition, entitling him to a World Wide Web broadcast during the 2005-2006 season at the Web Concert Hall and thereafter having his audition performance being broadcast from the Web Concert Hall Artist Series for the next seven years.

Mr. Attwood has performed numerous solo recitals across the country, including concerts in Steinway Hall and on the Kosciuszko Foundation Concert Series. He appears regularly on the “World of the Piano” series at Juilliard and is frequently heard on “Reflections From the Keyboard: the Pianist in Comparative Performance” weekly radio show on New York’s WQXR station, hosted by David Dubal.  Committed to the performance of contemporary music, Mr. Attwood has given the recent world premières of works by Cynthia Folio, Hector Morales Martinez, and Daniel Ott. Also active in chamber music, Mr. Attwood has performed with members of the Borromeo and St. Lawrence String Quartets, and is a regular collaborator with Mikhail Baryshnikov— having performed with the dancer’s White Oak Dance Project and provided music for Mr. Baryshnikov’s 2002-03 fourteen-city solo tour of the United States.  The programs, entitled “Solos with Piano...or Not...an Evening of Music and Dance with Mikhail Baryshnikov and pianist Koji Attwood,” began in the summer of 2002 and were performed to benefit the Baryshnikov Arts Center.  The tour featured new works choreographed for Mr. Baryshnikov by Cesc Gelabert, Tere O’Connor, Lucinda Childs, and Eliot Feld to the music of Cage, Jaggard, Nancarrow, Berg, and Leon Redbone.  Providing solo interludes as well as accompaniment for the dances, Mr. Attwood garnered praise for being a “phenomenal pianist” [Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin], “beautifully nuanced” [Cleveland Plain Dealer], “enchanting” [Santa Barbara News Press], and a “wonderful pianist” [Seattle Times]. “Koji Attwood…is a pianist of rare gifts, both as a solo artist and as a collaborator.  Playing solo pieces of Scriabin, Scarlatti, Liszt and Soler, this young pianist was much more than fill.  He is a concert pianist with an impeccable technique, a rich tone, and an assured sense of good interpretive taste”, declared Nevada-Events.  The Minneapolis Star-Tribune opined, “Koji Attwood percolate[d] rapturously… they [Baryshnikov and Attwood] displayed lovely chemistry in a performance full of virtuosity, and humor, whimsy and seriousness.  Their coordination was so tight that it sometimes seemed as though the dancer’s limbs were attached to the musician’s notes.”

Koji Attwood received a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Seymour Lipkin, and a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School under Jerome Lowenthal. He recently earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Juilliard, where he continued his studies with Mr. Lowenthal.

Along with pianist Mei-Ting Sun, first prize winner at both the Piano-E Competition and American Chopin Competition, Koji has founded www.whitekeys.com, a website devoted to providing free, high-quality piano recordings online.  Since its launch in March of 2005, the site has accumulated over five thousand members from across the globe.