Born: 1973 (Chicago, IL)

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Anthony Molinaro is the co-winner, along with Steven Osborne, of the 1997 Naumburg International Piano Competition. Mr. Molinaro has appeared as soloist with more than fifty symphony orchestras, headlined at major jazz clubs throughout the world, and composed and arranged music in both the classical and jazz genres. He has released five albums and has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Downbeat magazine and in the 2010 book, The New Face of Jazz.

Mr. Molinaro's has performed in Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, New York's Alice Tully Hall, and Chicago’s Symphony Center. He has been featured on Ravinia's Rising Stars Series, The Young Artist Series at the Kravis Center, The Irving S. Gilmore Festival, The Charles Vanda Master Series in Las Vegas, and at The Santa Fe Jazz Festival, The Toronto Jazz Festival, The Grand Teton Music Festival, and Eastern Music Festival among many others. He has appeared as guest soloist with more than fifty symphony orchestras such as: the Arkansas, Boise, Lake Forest, Louisville, Napa Valley, Naples, Richmond, and Syracuse Symphony Orchestras. He has also performed with the Canton, Cape Cod, Eugene, Flint, Savannah and Catskill Symphonies, as well as with the Chicago Sinfonietta, Chicago Jazz Orchestra, and the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra.  Abroad he has concertized in France, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Canada; and headlined at leading clubs for improvised music including: Chicago’s Green Mill, Toronto’s The Rex Hotel and Jazz Bar, Vienna’s Porgy and Bess, Amsterdam’s Bimhuis, Munich’s Unterfahrt, and Zurich’s Moods.

Mr. Molinaro is also a composer, arranger and improvisor. He often plays his own cadenzas inbMozart and Beethoven concerti, and his “free-wheeling” and “unconventional” rendition of Rhapsody in Blue features improvised cadenzas. In November 2005, he premiered his Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Catskill Symphony, and later that year debuted his big band arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue with The Chicago Jazz Orchestra.

Mr. Molinaro records exclusively for Nineteen-Eight Records, a label he founded in 2001 to support creative music of all genres. His debut CD, The Bach Sessions, features the Goldberg Variations and the F Minor and A Major Concertos with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Orchestra conducted by Andrew Litton. His wildly popular follow-up recording, New Blue, is a Gershwin album featuring hisown solo version of Rhapsody in Blue, as well as arrangements and improvisations on the Gershwin classics “Summertime,” “Someone To Watch Over Me,” “Embraceable You,” and “I Got Rhythm.” His collaboration with the two-time Grammy Award-winning harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy was highlighted by a live recording from the famed Green Mill Jazz Club in Chicago; and his 2010 recording, Canto Per Mio Padre, features music of Schubert / Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Debussy. His solo piano album exploring music of The Beatles, Here, There and Everywhere, was released in January 2014 to critical claim.

Mr. Molinaro has performed on PBS, WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, and on the popular Italian program Il Senso della Vita. He is also a frequent guest on Chicago’s WFMT.

Mr. Molinaro studied at the University of North Texas and Northwestern University, and has won several piano awards in addition to the Naumburg Prize,the William C. Byrd International Piano Competition, and the 1995 National Piano Fellowship from the American Pianists Association.

Molinaro is an Associate Professor and the Director of Music at Loyola University Chicago and was recently awarded The Edwin T. and Vivijeanne F. Sujack Award for Teaching Excellence, “the very highest honor that the Loyola University College of Arts and Sciences bestows for the very best in teaching and research.” In the twenty-year history of the award, he is the first ever winner from the Department of Fine and Performing Arts.

When not concertizing, he devotes considerable time to music education beyond Loyola University, and for three summers coordinated a music program for physically challenged children in South Hampton, New York. Away from music, Mr. Molinaro is a health and fitness enthusiast and an avid runner and triathlete.

Press Quotes

"An exceptionally persuasive solo performance... It was not difficult to discern the perpetual-motion ostinatos of Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata in Molinaro's dynamic, radical transformation of "Back Home to Indiana," nor the driving energy of Prokofiev's Toccata in Molinaro's similarly propulsive "19/8." But in every solo piece Molinaro played, from his Keith Jarrett-influenced rewriting of "Summertime" to his ferociously syncopated stride-piano setup, "Sketchy" (composed with Howard Levy), Molinaro acquitted himself as an original, often iconoclastic thinker equipped with leonine technique." - The Chicago Tribune

"A lovely singing line in the right hand, a strong left hand that can sing just beautifully, an even control of rapid configuration, ease and clarity in the distinction of contrapuntal voices, immediate concentration. He is already a fine melodist, and the importance of slow sections, done with persuassive rubato, seemed to mount continuously. When the 'Aria' (Goldberg Variations) came back at the the end, it had its history not just behind but within it, for what had been merely beguiling at the start of the work was now being more deeply explored." - The New York Times

"Edge-of-the-seat brilliance...absolutely first rate performances." -Salt Lake City Deseret News

"One of the hottest young pianists in the world...A gorgeous example of a sublimely talented and fiercely confident young artist intent on making a musical statement."

-The Eugene Register Guard‍‍‍