JON NAKAMATSU
Piano
Since winning the Gold Medal at the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Jon Nakamatsu has toured year-round working with today’s leading conductors and orchestras and appearing in recital and chamber collaborations at festivals and music centers worldwide. Together with the renowned clarinetist Jon Manasse, Mr. Nakamatsu regularly tours as a member of the Manasse/Nakamatsu Duo, which also serves as Artistic Directors of the esteemed Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, founded by pianist Samuel Sanders in 1979. Mr. Nakamatsu has been a frequent guest with such ensembles as the Emerson, Tokyo, Prazak, Escher, Jupiter, and Ying String Quartets, and also toured extensively with the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet. In 2018, Mr. Nakamatsu was appointed Artist-in-Residence of the Chautauqua Institution Piano Program.
Named Debut Artist of the Year by NPR’s Performance Today, Mr. Nakamatsu has been profiled by CBS Sunday Morning, Reader’s Digest, and NPR’s Live from Here!, and is featured in Playing with Fire, a documentary about the Tenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He has recorded thirteen CDs for Harmonia Mundi USA, all released to critical acclaim. His recording of Gershwin’s Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue with the Rochester Philharmonic remained atop Billboard’s classical charts for six months. Mr. Nakamatsu’s CD of the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas with clarinetist Jon Manasse was selected by The New York Times among its Top Classical Recordings of 2008.
Jon Nakamatsu studied privately with Marina Derryberry beginning at the age of six, worked with Karl Ulrich Schnabel, and studied composition and theory with Leonard Stein of the Schoenberg Institute at the University of Southern California. A former high school German teacher, Mr. Nakamatsu is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a bachelor’s degree in German studies and a master’s degree in education. In 2015, Mr. Nakamatsu joined the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Jon Nakamatsu serves on multiple international piano competition juries and has been invited as a guest speaker at numerous institutions, including the Van Cliburn Foundation, Stanford University, and Juilliard School.
