Composing for Piano

Pianist Molly Morkoski has performed as soloist and collaborative artist throughout the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean, and Japan. In 2007, she made her solo debut in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage. As a soloist, she enjoys championing the classics, such as Bach's Goldberg Variations and contemporary masterworks such as Ives' Concord Sonata and Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Je_sus, as well as premiering new works of current composer colleagues. Molly Morkoski has performed in many of the country's prestigious venues, including Weill and Zankel Halls, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, (Le) Poisson Rouge, National Sawdust, Boston's Gardner Museum and Jordan Hall, St. Louis' Powell Hall, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, San Francisco's SoundBox Theater, Los Angeles, CA' Zipper Hall, and Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian. She has performed concertos with the Raleigh, Asheville, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Indianapolis, Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestras, and she recorded Martin Kennedy's Piano Concerto with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra in the Czech Republic.

An avid chamber musician, Molly Morkoski has collaborated with some of today's leading musicians, including Dawn Upshaw, John Adams, Orli Shaham, John Corigliano, and David Robertson. She has performed with the Camerata Pacifica and New York Philharmonic Ensembles, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St Louis Symphony, Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, and with the Lark, Chiara, and Momenta Quartets. She has worked with composers John Harbison, Elliott Carter, Gabriela Lena Frank, Steven Stucky, Steve Mackey, David Bruce, Louis Andriessen, Oliver Knussen, George Benjamin, Eric Nathan, David Little, Andrew Waggoner, Melinda Wagner, Joan Tower, Magnus Lindberg, Augusta Reed Thomas, Timo Andres, Judd Greenstien, David Del Tredici, Charles Wuorinen, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, David Bruce, Lisa Bielawa, Tania Leon, and more. Recent highlights include an invitation by the San Francisco Symphony and John Adams to perform on their Soundbox series celebrating the composer's 70th birthday, a tribute concert at National Sawdust in NY for John Harbison premiering his “Bag of Tails,” a work dedicated and written for Ms. Morkoski and six other pianists, and concerto appearances with the Mendocino Festival Orchestra and at the Big Sky Festival in Montana.

Molly has several projects involving film and music with Hollywood producer, Jonathan Sanger, in the works, as well as a music reality TV show in current shopping talks. One of these projects, her “Nocturne Project” aligns her desire to commission more music from composers and pair them with fictional narratives based on facts that are highlighting various social and climate concerns of our day. During the pandemic of 2020, she also raised and organized commissions for two composers, and gave virtual premieres online of their works under the auspices of the Copland House Foundation. She was happy to redeem some of this time to continue in her passion to promote new music and provide artistic direction for her work at the piano and her colleagues in their composition.

Her debut solo CD, Threads, was released on Albany Records, to critical acclaim, and she has enjoyed numerous other recording collaborations, most recently Compadrazgo a disc dedicated to the piano music of Gabriela Lena Frank. Molly Morkoski was a Fulbright Scholar to Paris, where she was an apprentice with the Ensemble Intercontemporain. The recipient of many awards, she holds degrees from UNC Chapel Hill, Indiana University Bloomington, and SUNY Stony Brook. She has given masterclasses at universities throughout the US and abroad, and has served as a chamber music coach for programs at the Juilliard Pre-College, New York Youth Symphony, SUNY Stony Brook, Columbia and more. She is currently Associate Professor of Piano at CUNY-Lehman College in the Bronx and on the faculty of Hartt School of Music.

Molly is a Steinway Artist.