Guest pianist Jonathan Shames of the University of Oklahoma performs music by Schubert, Janacek, Szymanowski, and Chopin in his solo piano recital.
Program
Schubert: Sonata in c minor
Janacek: Piano Sonata 1.X.1905
Szymanowski: Schéhérazade from Masques
Chopin: Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante
Biography
Jonathan Shames
Jonathan Shames leads a wide-ranging musical career as pianist, conductor and artist-teacher. Since 2004 the Director of Orchestral Studies and Artistic Director of OU Opera at the University of Oklahoma, Mr. Shames has introduced Oklahoma audiences to a wide range of contemporary works, including Lori Laitman’s Scarlet Letter, Luigi Nono’s Il Canto sospeso, and Louis Andriessen’s De Tijd. He has premiered orchestral and piano works of Joël-François Durand, Betsy Jolas, Stephen Hartke and Daniel Asia; his recordings of Asia’s Scherzo-Sonata for Piano, dedicated to him, and of Anthony Brandt’s opera The Birth of Something, which he recorded with Houston’s Musiqa Ensemble, are available on Amazon Music. Mr. Shames has collaborated frequently with the Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, including a staging of Tate’s masque Clans with costuming by Chickasaw designers at the Chickasaw Nation’s Te Ata Theater in Ada, Oklahoma, and with Mr. Tate as vocal soloist. Mr. Shames also shares the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Recording for his work on William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and Experience.
Mr. Shames’ work as a teacher occupies an important place in his musical life. He taught piano at Oberlin, Rutgers, and Cornell and conducting at the University of Michigan and (currently) University of Oklahoma, led the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras and Marrowstone Music Festival for eight years, and continues to work as often as possible with youth orchestras, pianists and conductors. At the University of Oklahoma, he conducts opera and orchestra performances, tours with the OU Symphony Orchestra and often collaborates with OU’s School of Dance in works such as Balanchine’s ballets on Prokofiev’s Prodigal Son, Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. His conducting students have won international conducting prizes and positions in universities and music festivals both in the U.S. and abroad, and OU Opera has been recognized by the National Opera Association.
Mr. Shames’ own development included piano studies with Theodore Lettvin and Leon Fleisher, and a conducting fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he worked with Seiji Ozawa and Bernard Haitink. At age 19, he was invited to join the Opera Company of Boston as opera coach, pianist and conductor by the great impresario, stage director and conductor Sarah Caldwell. He later toured Russia with Ms. Caldwell, performing as pianist in Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk. Mr. Shames has performed and recorded as pianist with orchestras throughout the U.S. and Europe, among them the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the Cologne Radio Symphony, the Belgrade Radio and Television Symphony, Boston Pops, and Seattle, Indianapolis and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras. Music directorships have included the Olympia and Wyoming Symphonies. Mr. Shames was a laureate of several competitions including the 1982 Moscow International Tchaikovsky Competition; interviews and performances of his are featured in the widely-viewed documentary of the event. Mr. Shames studied philosophy as an undergraduate at Yale University.
Upcoming projects for Mr. Shames include Britten’s Turn of the Screw with OU Opera in October, 2025; piano recitals and concerto appearances in California, Kansas and Michigan in February and March of 2026; and recordings of Beethoven and Schubert piano works in May, 2026.