2006 IPPEC Examiner

Dr. Read Gainsford

The perfect combination of head, heart and hands typifies critics responses to Read Gainsford¡¦s first concert tour in the United States. He has earned critical and public acclaim in four continents, and has received high praise for music ranging from Mozart to Messiaen, from performances on period instruments to the pianistic complexities of Rachmaninoff.

Read Gainsford has performed widely in the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as solo recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician. He has made successful solo debuts at the Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall¡¦s Weill Recital Hall, as well as performing in many other venues, including the John F. Kennedy Center, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barbican Centre, Fairfield Halls, Birmingham Town Hall and St-Martin-in-the-Fields. He has recorded for the Amoris label, BBC Radio Three, Radio New Zealand¡¦s Concert Programme, and has broadcast on national television in New Zealand, the UK and Yugoslavia.

Read Gainsford has also won prizes in many national and international competitions, including the Dudley National Piano Competition (UK), the Royal Overseas League piano competition, and competitions held in Epinal (France), Belgrade (Jeunesses musicales), and New York (East and West Artists). His playing at the 1993 Van Cliburn Competition was hailed as one of the few all-round performances.¨

Born in New Zealand, Read Gainsford began full-time music study with that country¡¦s top piano teachers, Janetta MacStay and Bryan Sayer, before receiving a grant from the Woolf Fisher Trust and the top prize in the Television New Zealand Young Musician of the Year, which enabled him to move to London. There he studied privately with Brigitte Wild, a protégée of Claudio Arrau, before winning a place in the Advanced Solo Studies course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he studied with Joan Havill, graduating with the prestigious Concert Recital Diploma (premier prix).

Gainsford moved the United States in 1992 to enter the doctoral program at Indiana University, where he worked with Karen Shaw and Leonard Hokanson. Since living in the USA he has been guest artist for the American Music Teachers Association, as well as giving recitals, concerto performances and master-classes. He has appeared at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival and the Music Festival of the Hamptons, and is a member of the contemporary music group Ensemble X and the Garth Newel Chamber Players, as well as working with such musicians as Jacques Zoon, William Vermuelen, Roberto Diaz, Eddie vanOosthuyse and Luis Rossi.

He joined the piano faculty at Ithaca College in August, 1997, and has spent the last two summers teaching and performing at the Heifetz International Music Institute. He has just taken up a position as Associate Professor of Piano at Florida State University in the Fall of 2005.