Malcolm Bilson, fortepiano

Malcolm Bilson

Malcolm Bilson has been in the forefront of the period-instrument movement for more than thirty years. A member of the Cornell University Music Department since 1968, where he is the Frederick J. Whiton Professor of Music, he began his pioneering activity in the early 1970s as a performer of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert on late 18th- and early 19th-century pianos. Since then he has proven to be a key contributor to the restoration of the fortepiano to the concert stage and to fresh recordings of the "mainstream" repertory.

In addition to an extensive career as a soloist and chamber player, Mr. Bilson has toured with the English Baroque Soloists with John Eliot Gardiner, the Academy of Ancient Music with Christopher Hogwood, the Philharmonia Baroque under Nicholas McGegan, Tafelmusik of Toronto, Concerto Köln, and other early and modern instrument orchestras around the world. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bard College, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recently received the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for his "extraordinary lifetime achievements" as "a pioneer in the performance of period instruments and chamber music in general.