Jonathan Biss Joins Piano Faculty at The Glenn Gould School

The Royal Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School (GGS) is delighted to announce that internationally renowned pianist and educator Jonathan Biss will be joining its piano faculty this September. As co-artistic director of the Marlboro Music Festival, a former professor at The Curtis Institute, and an esteemed writer and communicator on music, Biss brings a wealth of performance and pedagogical insight to the Ihnatowycz Piano Program at GGS.

Praised as “a superb pianist and also an eloquent and insightful music writer” by The Boston Globe, and noted for his “impeccable taste and a formidable technique” by The New Yorker, Biss has appeared as a soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics; the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Cleveland, and Philadelphia Symphonies; and in Europe with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philharmonia, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, and the London Philharmonic, among many others.

Koerner Hall audiences were treated to Biss in performance last spring, when he appeared with the Brentano String Quartet and bassist Joseph Conyers in a stirring presentation of Schubert’s Trout Quintet — part of The Royal Conservatory’s 2023–24 concert season. He most recently appeared at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, performing Schubert’s final two piano sonatas in a solo recital that drew enthusiastic audiences.

He also toured a new solo recital program that pairs Schubert with new works by Alvin Singleton, Tyson Gholston Davis, and Tyshawn Sorey, and collaborated with Mitsuko Uchida for performances of Schubert’s lesser-known music for piano four-hands.

Biss is known for his profound engagement with Beethoven’s music, both in performance and through his thoughtful exploration of the composer’s legacy. He has recorded the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, authored the eBook Beethoven’s Shadow, and commissioned new works in dialogue with Beethoven through his Beethoven/5 project.

His artistic lineage is closely linked to The Glenn Gould School through his formative studies with the legendary Leon Fleisher, the inaugural Ihnatowycz Chair in Piano at GGS, whose influence continues to shape Biss’s musical voice. That legacy will now be passed on to a new generation of pianists.

“I'm very much looking forward to working with the students at the Glenn Gould School in the 2025–26 academic year,” said Biss. “Many of my colleagues will be musicians I've long admired, and I feel a connection to the school through my teacher Leon Fleisher, who spent so many years as the Ihnatowycz Chair in Piano. I cannot overstate Leon's importance in my musical life; I think of him nearly every day, never more so than when I teach. It will be very meaningful for me to spend so much time at a place that he loved, and that owes so much to his total musical integrity.”

Jonathan Biss’s appointment to the exceptional GGS piano faculty follows Anton Nel’s appointment in 2024. He will join other notables such as Jeremy Denk (Ihnatowycz Chair in Piano), John O’Conor, James Anagnoson, David Louie, Anya Alexeyev, Li Wang, and Michael Berkovsky.