The Tryon Concert Association will end the 2012-2013 season on Thursday, March 21, 2013 at the Tryon Fine Arts Center, with the highly acclaimed pianist Orion Weiss.
Born in 1981, Weiss developed a great love for playing piano as a child (he says it was an excuse for not studying math) and he became a student at the Pre-College Program of the Cleveland Institute of Music.
He then entered Juilliard where, at age 17, he performed Liszt’s Piano Concerto no. 1 with the Cleveland Orchestra. In March of 1999, with less than 24 hours’ notice, Weiss replaced Andre Watts for a performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Since obtaining his bachelor of music degree at Juilliard in 2004, where he studied with Emanuel Ax, Weiss has had a whirlwind career, performing with numerous major orchestras in the United States and Canada as well as  renowned orchestras in Europe and the far east.
He performs as a recitalist, a chamber musician and a duo-pianist. Weiss plays duo piano with such eminent artists as Emanuel Ax and Anna Polonsky, his wife. You may remember Anna Polonsky, who performed with clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester in a concert at the Tryon Fine Arts Center in February 2011.
Weiss’s awards, among others, include an Avery Fisher Career Grant, a Gina Bachauer Scholarship and the Meiczyslaw Munz Scholarship. He has recorded the complete Gershwin works for piano and orchestra with JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic.
Of this performance Falletta wrote “… he [Weiss] brought his own take on Gershwin as a very young person — the kind of swagger of it. But he added a sort of elegance and classical balance that made us think about the music in a different way.”
The concert series is by subscription. For information call Dorothy Wyckoff at 828-859-6065 or write Tryon Concert Association, P.O. Box 32, Tryon, NC 28782.
For information about the entire season visit www.TryonConcerts.com.