Adam Golka, Piano

Biography

24-year-old pianist Adam Golka is the winner of two of America's most prestigious musical awards: the 2008 Gilmore Young Artist Award, and most recently the 2009 Max I. Allen Classical Fellowship Award of the American Pianists Association. He has maintained a highly-active performing schedule in his consistently growing career, ever since he won the first prize in the 2nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition in 2003. His extensive concerto appearances have included engagements with the Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Diego, Fort Worth, Syracuse, Lansing, Knoxville, Albany, Ann Arbor, Wichita, South Dakota, Pensacola, Mobile, Silicon Valley, West Virginia, Erie, and Grand Rapids symphonies, the Grand Teton and Colorado music festival orchestras , and outside the US with the BBC Scottish Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa), Sinfonia Varsovia, the Shanghai Philharmonic, Teresa Carreno Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, Orchestre Poitou-Charentes, and Orquesta Filarmonica de Jalisco (Guadalajara). In March 2010, Adam made his Isaac Stern Auditorium Debut at Carnegie Hall, playing Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto with the New York Youth Symphony. Adam's solo appearances have taken him to famous venues such as the Concertgebouw (Kleine Zaal) in Amsterdam, Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall) in New York, and Musashino Hall in Tokyo, among others. Adam has amassed a broad performing repertoire in his young career; he has performed more than twenty piano concertos and enough solo works to fill at least twenty recital programs, among others the thirty-two sonatas of Beethoven.

A 1st generation American, Golka comes from an immigrant family of Polish musicians. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Golka moved to Fort Worth, Texas, when he was 15 years-old, in order to pursue studies with Jose Feghali at Texas Christian University. Currently, Adam is studying with the legendary Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, but his primary residence is in New York City. Adam's earlier teachers were Dariusz Pawlas, in Houston, as well as his mother, Anna Golka.