Gerardo Teissonnière (born March 29, 1961, in

Ponce, Puerto Rico Ponce ( , , ) is a city and a Municipalities of Puerto Rico, municipality on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. The most populated city outside the San Juan, Puerto Rico, San Juan metropolitan area, Ponce was founded on August 12, 1692Some publ ...

) is a Puerto Rican

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

and

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

Education

Gerardo Teissonnière studied at the Conservatory of Music in

Puerto Rico ; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...

with Jesús María Sanromá and at the

Cleveland Institute of Music The Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) is a private music conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio. The school was founded in 1920 by a group of supporters led by Martha Bell Sanders and Mary Hutchens Smith, with Ernest Bloch serving as its first dire ...

with Vitya Vronsky ( Vronsky & Babin), both disciples of

Artur Schnabel Artur Schnabel (17 April 1882 – 15 August 1951) was an Austrian-born classical pianist, composer and Pedagogy, pedagogue. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th ...

and

Alfred Cortot Alfred Denis Cortot ( , ; 26 September 187715 June 1962) was a French pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. A pianist of massive repertory, he was especially valued for his po ...

, and at the Aspen Music Festival with Jeaneane Dowis, former assistant to Rosina Lhévinne at the Juilliard School. He also pursued post-graduate studies in Europe with

Dmitri Bashkirov Dmitri Aleksandrovich Bashkirov (; November 1, 1931 – March 7, 2021) was a Russian pianist and academic teacher. Trained in his hometown Tbilisi and Moscow, he began an international career as a soloist when he won the Marguerite Long Piano Co ...

and Joaquín Achúcarro.

Professional career

Since his American debut at th
National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Gerardo Teissonnière has given première performances of music by 20th-century composers such as

Pablo Casals Pau Casals i Defilló (Catalan: ; 29 December 187622 October 1973), known in English as Pablo Casals,Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, critic, writer, teacher, pianist, and conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as the "Dean of American Compos ...

Claude Debussy Achille Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionism in music, Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influe ...

Alberto Ginastera Alberto Evaristo Ginastera (; April 11, 1916June 25, 1983) was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century classical music, 20th-century classical composers of the Americas. Biography G ...

Lowell Liebermann Lowell Liebermann (born February 22, 1961, in New York City) is an American composer, pianist and conductor. Life and career At the age of sixteen, Liebermann performed at Carnegie Hall, playing his Piano Sonata, op. 1. He studied at the Juilliar ...

Darius Milhaud Darius Milhaud (, ; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His composition ...

Arvo Pärt Arvo Pärt (; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of contemporary classical music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in p ...

and

Heitor Villa-Lobos Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, and classical guitarist described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has globally bec ...

. In 2004 he embarked on a five-recital cycle presenting the complete

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

piano sonatas. In 2005 he was invited to perform in Poland in conjunction with commemorative events of the 150th anniversary of Chopin's death and the fifteenth Chopin International Piano Competition. Teissonniere has recorded for the Steinway & Sons label and is
Steinway Artist
and faculty member of the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Awards and honors

Gerardo Teissonnière is the recipient of the 202
Governor’s Award For The Arts in the Individual Artist category
the Arthur Loesser Memorial Award and the 2008 Alumni Achievement Award from the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 2008 he was awarded the Judson Smart Living Award in Education. He has also been nominated for the Ohio Arts Council's Governors' Award for the Arts.

Discography

References

Hispanic American Biographies. Danbury, Conn: Grolier, 2006

External links

Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Teissonniere, Gerardo 1961 births Living people Musicians from Ponce Puerto Rican classical pianists Puerto Rican people of Corsican descent Cleveland Institute of Music alumni Cleveland Institute of Music faculty 21st-century classical pianists