Ignat Solzhenitsyn

Ignat Solzhenitsyn, piano (Moscow/New York, NY), is Principal Guest Conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and has just stepped down after six seasons as Music Director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia to become its Conductor Laureate. He is much in demand as a guest conductor, having recently led the symphonies of Baltimore, Buffalo, Dallas, Indianapolis, Nashville, New Jersey, North Carolina, Seattle, Toledo, and Toronto, the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, the Czech National Symphony, as well as many of the major orchestras in Russia including the Mariinsky Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Bolshoi Symphony, and the Moscow Symphony.  He has partnered with such world-renowned soloists as Richard Goode, Gary Graffman, Steven Isserlis, Leila Josefowicz, Sylvia McNair, Garrick Ohlsson, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Mitsuko Uchida. In recent seasons, his extensive touring schedule in the United States and Europe has included concerto performances with numerous major orchestras, including those of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Toronto, London, Paris, Israel, and Sydney, among others, and collaborations with such distinguished conductors as Herbert Blomstedt, James Conlon, James DePreist, Charles Dutoit, Lawrence Foster, Valery Gergiev, Krzysztof Penderecki, and André Previn, among others.  In addition to his recital appearances in the United States at New York’s 92nd Street Y, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, St. Paul's Ordway Theatre, Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium, Salt Lake City’s Abravanel Hall, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, and many others from coast to coast, Ignat has also given numerous recitals in Europe and the Far East in such major musical centers as London, Milan, Zurich, Moscow, Tokyo, and Sydney. An avid chamber musician, Ignat has collaborated with the Emerson, Borodin, Brentano, and St. Petersburg String Quartets, and in four-hand recital with Mitsuko Uchida.  He has frequently appeared at international festivals, including Salzburg, Evian, Ludwigsburg, Caramoor, Ojai, Marlboro, Nizhniy Novgorod and Moscow’s famed December Evenings. A winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ignat serves on the piano faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Tanglewood Music Center.  He has been featured on many radio and television specials, including CBS Sunday Morning and ABC’s Nightline.  Born in Moscow, he resides in New York City with his wife and three children.