Emanuel Ax, pianist

Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize. Emanuel Ax was recently named the 2026 Musical America Artist of the Year.

As Artist in Residence for the 2026/2027 season with Radio France, the season begins with a European tour with performances in Munich, Paris, and Amsterdam. Upon returning to North America, Ax will embark on a series of concerts with The Knights with the final performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. An avid collaborator, Mr. Ax’s season will also include chamber music with long-term musical colleagues and friends, Yo-Yo Ma (in Hartford, Philadelphia, East Lansing, Ann Arbor, Chappel Hill and Winona) and Itzhak Perlman (in Philadelphia, Akron, and Detroit). He will return to North American orchestras in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Lincoln, Irvine, Portland, Seattle, Sarasota, Mobile, and New Albany. In recital he can be heard in Omaha, Palm Beach, New Orleans, Ridgefield, La Jolla, San Francisco, Schenectady, Rochester, and at Carnegie Hall. An extensive European tour will include concerts in London, Oslo, Madrid, Dresden, Prague, Monte Carlo, and Milan. Three years in the making, Joseph Levy’s “All the Music in the World”, a documentary film following Mr. Ax on tour including interviews with his many artistic partners will be premiered at DOC NYC this fall. “Classical Music Happy Hour”, the podcast launched by WQXR NY in 2026 hosted by “Manny” Ax received such acclaim that a new season is in preparation for 2027.

Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. He has received GRAMMY^® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of GRAMMY-winning recordings with Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax contributed to an International EMMY^® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).

Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University.

OFFICIAL BIO FOR THE 2026-2027 SEASON. LAST UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2026.

PLEASE DESTROY ALL PREVIOUSLY DATED MATERIALS.

https://www.opus3artists.com/artists/emanuel-ax/

PLEASE NOTE: ALL PROGRAM BIOGRAPHIES MUST INCLUDE REFERENCE TO MR. AX’S EXCLUSIVE RECORDING CONTRACT WITH SONY CLASSICAL