“Lydia Artymiw is a compelling musical personality with the unusual ability to reach out and touch her listeners. She has a beautiful touch, a creative imagination, and a feeling for her instrument’s possibilities of color and texture far in advance of that cultivated by most of the young virtuosos we hear.”
The New York Times
SEMI FINAL
& FINAL ROUND
ABOUT LYDIA
The recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Prize, Philadelphia-born Lydia Artymiw has performed with over one hundred orchestras world-wide including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Seattle Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, National Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Artymiw has been a juror for many international piano competitions including the 2015 Cliburn Junior in Fort Worth (TX), the 2017 Lang Lang-Fujian in Shenzhen, the 2019 First China International in Beijing, the 2020 PianoArts in Milwaukee, the 2022 Charles Wadsworth in GA, the 2024 Montréal International (Canada), the 2024 Weatherford (Texas), and the 2024 Gina Bachauer (Utah). She has also been a juror for 22 Juilliard concerto competitions as well as several at the Manhattan School. From 2015-2019 she was a frequent guest teacher at Juilliard and presented master classes at both Curtis and Juilliard in 2016.
Solo recital tours have taken her to all major American cities and to important European music centers, and throughout the Far East. She has performed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Ukraine, Estonia, Finland, and Poland, as well as in China, Singapore, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea.
Critics have acclaimed her seven solo recordings for the Chandos label, and she has also recorded for Bridge, Centaur, and Naxos. Her debut Chandos “Variations” CD won Gramophone Magazine’s “Best of the Year” award, and her Tchaikovsky Seasons CDsold over 25,000 copies. Her festival appearances include Aspen, Bantry (Ireland), Bay Chamber, Bravo! Vail Valley, Caramoor, Chamber Music Northwest, Chautauqua, Grand Canyon, Hollywood Bowl, Marlboro, Montreal, Mostly Mozart, Seattle, and Tucson. Her CD of the “Complete Cello and Piano Music by Felix Mendelssohn” with cellist Marcy Rosen was released on the Bridge label in April 2018 and was nominated for a 2018 Grammy award.
An acclaimed chamber musician, Artymiw has collaborated with such celebrated artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Richard Stoltzman, Arnold Steinhardt, Michael Tree, Kim Kashkashian, Marcy Rosen, John Aler, Benita Valente, and the Guarneri, Tokyo, American, Alexander, Borromeo, Daedalus, Miami, Orion, and Shanghai Quartets, and has toured nationally with Music from Marlboro groups. A recipient of top prizes in the 1976 Leventritt and the 1978 Leeds International Competitions, she graduated from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts and studied with distinguished concert pianist and former Director of the Curtis Institute of Music, Gary Graffman, for twelve years.
Artymiw is Emerita Distinguished McKnight Professor of Piano at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where she taught from 1989-2020. In 2015 Artymiw was awarded the University of Minnesota’s “Excellence in Graduate Teaching” award.