Bio

Described by the New York Times as an "able and persuasive advocate" of new music, pianist Nicholas Phillips is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.  He is active as a soloist and collaborative artist; recent performances include solo recitals in New York, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto with the Eau Claire Chamber Orchestra, Mozart’s Piano Quintet with the Wisconsin Woodwind Quintet, a performance at the American Liszt Society’s 2010 Festival, a performance of Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes on an 1841 Bösendorfer at the Romantic Piano Workshop in Greensboro, NC, performances on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Live from the Chazen series, and a solo recital in Korea sponsored by the U.S. Embassy. Upcoming engagements include solo recitals in Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Kentucky, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas, and an invitation to play at the Croatian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Phillips has given lecture-recitals and presentations at a number of international, national, and state conferences, including: a performance of new piano works by living Korean women composers at the College Music Society 2011 International Conference in Seoul, presentations on teaching literature by Edward MacDowell and Felix Mendelssohn at the Minnesota (2010) and Wisconsin (2008, 2009) Music Teachers Association State Conferences, and two separate programs on Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words at the College Music Society 2009 International Conference in Croatia, and the Seventh Biennial Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain in Bristol, UK (July, 2009). He authored and presented a paper titled “The Influence of Technology in the Nineteenth Century on Piano Instruments, Technique, and Repertoire” at the 2007 Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference, and is the author of “Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words Revisited: Culture, Gender, Literature, and the Role of Domestic Piano Music in Victorian England,” published by VDM Verlag in 2008.

Phillips released two CDs in 2011 on Albany Records: Portals and Passages, featuring piano music by American composer Ethan Wickman, and Boris Papandopulo: Piano Music, featuring solo piano music by the famous 20^th-century Croatian composer.

A native of Indiana, Phillips began formal piano lessons in the preparatory program at Indiana University at the age of ten. He holds degrees in piano performance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music (Doctor of Musical Arts), Indiana University (Master of Music), and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Bachelor of Music, summa cum laude). His teachers include internationally-renowned pianists and pedagogues Karen Taylor, Paul Barnes, Karen Shaw, and Robert Weirich.