| Since first self-presenting and performing Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas at the age of 18, Adam Golka has immersed himself in studying the master’s works. He has studied Beethoven under the guidance of masters such as Leon Fleisher, Alfred Brendel, Sir András Schiff, Murray Perahia, and Ferenc Rados. In 2011, Adam performed a cycle of all five Beethoven concerti with the Lubbock Symphony, with his brother Tomasz at the baton, and last summer, he made his San Francisco Symphony debut at the Stern Grove Festival in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. He will celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020 by playing the whole cycle of Beethoven’s 32 in multiple cities. This will coincide with a self-produced video series called “32@32” and the release of his first volume of Beethoven’s Sonatas on First Hand Records.
Adam Golka was selected by Sir András Schiff to perform recitals at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr in Germany, Tonhalle Zürich, as well as in Berlin and New York (organized by the 92nd Street Y). Adam has been regularly on the concert stage since the age of sixteen, when he won first prize at the 2nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition. He has also received the Gilmore Young Artist Award and the Max I. Allen Classical Fellowship Award from the American Pianists Association.
In the 2018/2019 season Adam’s concerto engagements include the Mozart Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491 with the (NFM) Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra in Wroclaw, Poland, Joseph Swensen conducting, and Grieg’s Concerto with Symphony in C in New Jersey. He will partner with Roman Rabinovich for series of two piano recitals in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, and he will perform a solo recital at the Minnesota Beethoven Festival and also at the Cleveland Chamberfest in June. The Cliburn Foundation presented Adam in a solo recital at the Kimbell Art Museum, with works by Beethoven, Paderewski, and Chopin. Also in collaboration with the Cliburn Foundation, Adam offered his special education program: “Van Cliburn: An American Hero”, an appearance at the Chopin Society of Texas, Corpus Christi, and a recital at the Chopin Foundation (USA) in Miami, FL.
Golka’s solo appearances with orchestra have included the BBC Scottish, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Indianapolis, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Fort Worth, Vancouver, Seattle, and Jacksonville Symphonies, Grand Teton Festival Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa, the Sinfonia Varsovia, the Shanghai Philharmonic, the Warsaw Philharmonic, and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. He made his Carnegie Hall Isaac Stern Auditorium debut in 2010, performing Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto with the New York Youth Symphony.
Adam’s past appearances as a chamber musician included festivals such as Marlboro, Caramoor, Ravinia, Prussia Cove, and Music@Menlo, the Frankly Music series in Milwaukee, and he is also a member of the Manhattan Chamber Players. He has been presented by the Musicians Emergency Fund in Alice Tully Hall on multiple occassions, and he has performed recitals in the Concertgebouw’s Kleine Zaal, Musashino Civic Cultural Hall in Tokyo, and at festivals such as Mostly Mozart, the Gilmore Keyboard Festival, the Ravinia Festival, the New York City International Keyboard Festival, the Newport Music Festival, the Hornby Island Festival in British Columbia, and the Duszniki Chopin festival. Adam recently performed a recital of Schubert, Liszt and Brahms at the extraordinary Tippet Rise Arts Center in Fishtail, Montana, and he is also a frequent guest at the Krzyżowa-Music Festival in Poland, where he premiered his own two-piano arrangement of Debussy’s La Mer in 2018 and also narrated his original poetry for Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, created especially for the opening concert of the festival.
Adam has premiered solo works written for him by Richard Danielpour, Michael Brown and Jarosław Gołembiowski. His début album, featuring the first sonata of Brahms and the Hammerklavier Sonata of Beethoven, was released in 2014 by First Hand Records. In 2017, he released his Schumann album for the same label, not only playing solo works but also partnering with soprano Lauren Eberwein. This album was produced by his friends Michael Brown and Roman Rabinovich, whose First Hand albums Adam in turn produced.
Adam Golka is greatly indebted to the late José Feghali, with whom he studied throughout all his teenager years and young adulthood, as well as to his insightful studies with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory. He is Artist-in-Residence at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches piano, chamber music, and conducts the Holy Cross Chamber Orchestra. |
