Gregory Allen

About the Artists

Gregory Allen 

Gregory Allen, professor of piano at The University of Texas at Austin, was the Grand Prize winner of the 1980 Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv; he also won top honors at the Queen Elisabeth, Gina Bachauer and Washington International Competitions. He has appeared with numerous major orchestras and has adjudicated many prestigious competitions. Chamber music has always been a large part of professor Allen’s career.  He has collaborated with a number of well-known String Quartets; as a founding member of the Chamber Soloists of Austin, he programmed the premieres of approximately 40 new works. The group was invited by the USIA to an extensive tour of South America in 1992. To commemorate the centennial of Arthur Rubinstein’s birth in 1987 Allen researched and recorded three albums of music written for and dedicated to Rubinstein. He also recorded the complete piano works of Joaquín Rodrigo, in collaboration Anton Nel, fellow professor of piano at the Butler School of Music. Recently Allen has completed new arrangements of both Brahms String Sextets for Piano Trio; and a transcription for solo piano of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue for organ. Allen’s major teachers include John Perry, Jerome Lowenthal, and Leon Fleisher. He has served on the piano faculty at UT Austin since 1973.
 

Anton Nel

Winner of the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition at Carnegie Hall, Anton Nel continues to tour internationally as recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician and teacher. Highlights in the U.S. include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, and Detroit Symphonies (he has a repertoire of more than 100 works for piano and orchestra.) In addition to recitals in virtually every U.S. state he has appeared overseas at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, as well as major venues in China, Korea, and South Africa. Much sought after as a chamber musician he regularly appears with some of the world’s finest instrumentalists and singers at festivals on four continents. He holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair at The University of Texas at Austin and also gives an annual series of masterclasses at the Manhattan School of Music and the Glenn Gould School in Toronto. During the summers he is on the artist-faculties at the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival, and the Orford Music Academy in Quebec. Nel also frequently performs as harpsichordist and fortepianist. His recordings include four solo albums, chamber music recordings (including the complete Beethoven and Brahms cello/piano works with Bion Tsang), and works for piano and orchestra by Franck, Faure, Saint-Saens and Edward Burlingame Hill. The Johannesburg-born Mr. Nel is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he studied with Adolph Hallis, and the University of Cincinnati where he worked with Bela Siki and Frank Weinstock. His website is antonnel.com.

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