Biography

The Argentine pianist Mirian Conti enjoys a growing reputation as a musician whose performances combine technical brilliance with striking originality and artistic insight. Stylistically assured in a wide range of repertoire, Ms. Conti is considered a leading exponent of Spanish music; and her rare ability to communicate passion and excitement when playing contemporary scores has won the admiration of leading American and Argentine composers such as Bowles, Broeders, Cohn, Diamond, Gould, Lees, Persichetti, Ramey, White, and Zyman.

She premiered Lalo Schifrin's Piano Concerto No.2 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles . She was invited by the French Cultural Center in Tangier, Morocco to perform a concert in homage to Paul Bowles. The pianist has made solo, orchestral and chamber appearances at Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City, and has performed at numerous concert halls throughout the world, including the Teatro Colón in her native Argentina.

In 1989, she was awarded a special prize as the best performer of Spanish music in the International Pilar Bayona Piano Competition in Zaragoza, Spain.  In 1995, she was awarded the Andrés Segovia-José Miguel Ruiz Morales Prize as the best performer of Spanish music in the XXXVIII Santiago de Compostela International University Course on Spanish music in Spain. She has appeared with the Jupiter Symphony and the American Composers Orchestra in New York City and the Queens Symphony Orchestra. She was invited to perform in the prestigious Beethoven-Liszt Concerts Cycle organized by the Juan March Foundation in Spain . Conti has recorded several compact discs for the Antilles New Direction Label of Island Records featuring works by Mexican, Argentine, and Spanish composers. Her CD on the Koch International Classics label features rarely performed piano works by Joaquín Turina and has been enthusiastically received by critics as well as her reecording "Poems", featuring American solo piano music released on the Albany label. Her latest recording featuring works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann has been released by Towerhill Recordings as well as her new CD "Dances of Spain" on the Koch label and "Looking South" on the Albany label, a disc of Argentine piano music.  Her lecture/recitals and masterclasses on the music of Spain have been presented at Oberlin College, Manhattan School of Music, William Paterson College and at the National Conservatory López Buchardo in Buenos Aires and the Simar Festival in Cali, Colombia.

Ms. Conti studied with Genny Blech in Buenos Aires and continued her musical education in New York at The Juilliard School where her teachers were Richard Fabre and Josef Raieff. She earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees as an award winning William Petscheck Scholarship student. She has also studied with Edmundo López and Freda Rosenblatt in New York and is currently coaching with the renowned concert pianist Byron Janis. Ms. Conti was the Talent Coordinator for the 1998 AT&T Latino Arts Festival in Queens, NY. She is the Artistic Director and Founder of the "I Certamen Musical Rioplatense", a competition for musicians of Argentina and Uruguay which took place in November 1999 in Buenos Aires . She has also created and directed the " New York City International Tango Competition" for professional musicians in New York and is preparing for the "NYC International The Americas Classical Competition" taking place in 2008. Celebrating Women's Month in March, 2002, the Cultural Center of Queens and The Women's Council of New York awarded her for her dedication to classical music in the Latin American community.  In recognition of her extraordinary talent, a scholarship honoring Mirian Conti has been established at The Juilliard School by the Edwin Bachman Estate.

In addition, she was selected as one of the "100 Outstanding Alumni" to celebrate The Juilliard School's Centennial in 2005-6.