BIOGRAPHY

Recently appointed to the Music Faculty of State University of New York at Oneonta, pianist Adam Kent has performed in recital, as soloist with orchestra, and in chamber music throughout the United States, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Latin America. A winner of the American Pianists Association Fellowship and Simone Belsky Music Awards, Dr. Kent also received top prizes in the Thomas Richner, the Juilliard Concerto, and the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competitions, and is a recipient of the Arthur Rubinstein Prize and the Harold Bauer Award. Dr. Kent made his New York recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in 1989, and has been featured on WQXR, WNYC, WFUV, WVOX and Sirius Radio stations. Chamber music has been an important part of Dr. Kent’s concert life, most recently with the Damocles Trio, which has performed both in the United States and abroad. The group’s recording of Joaquín Turina’s complete piano trios and quartet with Emerson Quartet violist Lawrence Dutton was released by Claves Records in 2004, followed up by their recording of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s complete piano trios and Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez’s Trio brasileiro in 2009.

Spanish music has been a specialty of Dr. Kent’s, whose advocacy has been acknowledged by the Spanish government on numerous occasions. In 2011, King Juan Carlos I of Spain honored the pianist by bestowing Spain’s Orden al Mérito Civil, and the Consulate General of Spain in NY underwrote Dr. Kent’s course on the history of Spanish music at Brooklyn College. The Spanish Consulate has also sponsored numerous appearances by Dr. Kent at NY’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the Spanish Ministry for Education and Culture awarded him a grant for Música por doquier/Hispanic Music Everywhere, a year-long celebration of Spanish and Latin-American in NYC with the Damocles Trio and Spanish composer and conductor Salvador Brotons. The Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Graduate Center and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU have also sponsored a number of Dr. Kent’s Hispanic-themed projects, including commissions of new works by Tania León, Salvador Brotons, Miguel-Ángel Roig-Francolì, and others.

Dr. Kent’s critically acclaimed recording of the complete piano works of Ernesto Halffter is available on Bridge Records, and a recent performance of Book I of Albéniz’s Iberia suite was praised in the Indianapolis Star as “Albénizian to the core…his suave legato touch wedded to a tone with an Old World patina about it.” Excelsior of Mexico City enthused about a recent all-Spanish recital, “Adam Kent brought not only magnificent technical ability to the music, but managed to go beyond the printed page, delving into the essence of what the composer sought to express.” Dr. Kent’s expertise in this repertory has also extended to interviews and performances in several recent documentaries on Spanish composers Enrique Granados and Manuel de Falla. At present, a recording of Tania León’s complete piano music is in the works as well as a documentary on Isaac Albéniz.

Summers find Dr. Kent serving as Director of Cultural Outreach at the Burgos International Music Festival in Spain and teaching and performing at the Summit Music Festival in N.Y. and at the Cursos de Verano of the Fundación Princesa de Asturias in Oviedo. Recent performances include a concert of works by Ibizan composer Miguel-Angel Roig-Francoli at Carnegie Hall, a recital at N.Y.C.’s (le) poisson rouge broadcast on The Classical Network radio station, the world-premiere of a newly-written piano trio by Argentine composer Sebastian Zubieta’s at N.Y.C.’s Look and Listen Festival, performances with the Westchester Chamber Symphony and the New Jersey Baroque Orchestras, concerts in Havana, Cuba and a recital of works by Tania León at the University of California at Riverside.

Dr. Kent received a D.M.A. from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal and served as an adjunct professor. His dissertation, The Use of Catalan Folk Materials in the Works of Federico Mompou and Joaquín Nin-Culmell, was awarded the school’s Richard F. French Prize, and his writings have appeared in Clavier, Music in Art and Cambridge Scholars journals and in a Spanish-language monograph on Xavier Montsalvatge published by the Spanish Society of Authors and Editors. He holds B.M. and M.M. degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Solomon Mikowsky. Dr. Kent is a long-standing member of the Piano Faculty of Manhattan School of Music Precollege Division, and has served as Music Director of Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation in White Plains, NY since 1990.