Russell Ryan, piano

Born in North Dakota, Russell Ryan received his first piano lessons at the age of six. He was prize winner several times at the San Francisco Junior Bach Festival and performed as a soloist for four consecutive years. After completion of his piano studies under Paul Hersh at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he participated in master classes at the Juilliard School in New York , and subsequently moved to Austria, where he studied piano chamber music under Georg Ebert at Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts, graduating with honors.

In 1985, Ryan became a member of staff of the vocal department at Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts, where, as of 1991, he worked as assistant in the lied-class of Edith Mathis. For several years he was also accompanist of the Wiener Singverein and frequently gave master classes for lied, opera and musical theatre at international festivals, such as the Jugendfestival Bayreuth, the Wiener Meisterkurse, Gino Bechi Festival in Florence, the Oslo Music Academy, and the Austrian Cultural Forum. In 2008, he received a professorship of practice for collaborative piano at Arizona State University and is guest instructor at the Institute for the International Education of Students (IES) in Vienna, where he is in charge of the Vocal Performance Class. He also is a guest artist at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival and Middlebury Summer program.

Ryan performs regularly as a soloist and collaborative artist throughout China, Europe, Israel, Japan and the U. S. He appeared in many radio and television broadcasts, recorded several CDs and successfully concertized in the Wiener Konzerthaus, Wiener Festwochen, the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, the Grieg Festivals in Oslo and Bergen, the Lincoln and Kennedy Center Series, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestival in Germany, to mention only but a few venues. In addition, he performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, accompanying Hugo Wolf’s major song-cycles on several evenings.