Christina Petrowska Quilico performs Heather Schmidt: Piano Concerto No. 4 "Phoenix Ascending"

Christina Petrowska-Quilico performed this concerto on June 25, 2015 with the Kindred Spirits Orchestra.The Governor General Announces announced the appointment of Christina Petrowska Quilico, C.M. OOnt, FRSC “For her celebrated career as a classical and contemporary pianist, and for championing Canadian music.” The Order of Canada is one of our country’s highest civilian honours. CBC Music named her one of “20 Can’t-Miss Classical Pianists of 2014” and one of “Canada’s 25 best classical pianists” in 2015. The CBC also entered her into "In Concert Hall of Fame" which features musical legendary artists. Ottawa-born pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico was only 10 in her orchestral debut, playing the Haydn D major concerto with Toronto’s Conservatory Orchestra. At 14, co-winning a concerto competition along with Murray Perahia, she played Mozart’s K.488 in New York. The Times hailed her as a “promethean talent”, and in subsequent solo recitals as “an extraordinary talent with phenomenal ability...dazzling virtuosity”, playing “to perfection”. She trained in the grand Russian and European traditions at Juilliard and went on to doctoral studies in Musicology at the Sorbonne on a French Government Grant and in Germany with Ligeti and Stockhausen, supported largely by grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. She has given concerts and toured the U.S. and Canada, as well as to Taiwan, the Middle East, France, England, Germany, Greece and Ukraine. She has appeared in recital in Carnegie, Alice Tully and Merkin halls, and with most of Canada’s leading orchestras and the symphony orchestras of Greek Radio, Taipei and in the U.S. She has premiered well over 200 works. By 2023, she had performed 50 concertos with orchestra, In 2019 she played three Canadian concertos –André Mathieu’s Fourth (Ontario premiere), Larysa Kuzmenko’s First, piano concerto and the world premiere of Kuzmenko’s duo concerto Skartaris, written for her (with Sinfonia Toronto, Maestro Nurhan Arman and violinist Marc Djokic). Recent years have seen Petrowska Quilico appear at the Frederic Rzewski Festival in New York, and in the Montreal series Société́ de musique contemporaine du Québec, and Innovations en concert, among other series and venues. In recorded output, few artists can match Petrowska Quilico, particularly in the music of her time. Among her 50 plus CDs are eight Canadian piano concertos on five albums; and solo and chamber works by contemporary Canadian and international composers. Three feature the music of her first husband, Montreal composer Michel-Georges Brégent. She also recorded four CDs and toured extensively with her second husband, the legendary Metropolitan Opera baritone Louis Quilico. Four of her CDs of Canadian music have earned JUNO Awards nominations, three of them for concerto CDs, and one for Glass Houses Revisited. This last is one of her five titles (seven CDs) devoted to the piano music of Ann Southam, with whom her name is almost synonymous. Among Centrediscs’ all-time best sellers, the CD in 2014 was named one of “30 best Canadian classical recordings ever” by CBC Music. She salutes women composers in her recent Global Sirens CD. Her paintings adorn some of her more recent CD covers. Her traditional classical CDs include Chopin, Liszt, Tangos and recently the six volumes of the complete Mozart violin and piano sonatas, which she recorded with violinist Jacques Israelievitch shortly before his passing. Fleur de Son has already released the first two, to rave reviews. As American Record Guide wrote, “This is how music should be played. There is a feeling of freedom and ebullience in these performances that I attribute mainly to the wonderful Quilico, and she is one of the most satisfying pianists I have heard in this music.” She continues to be sought-after for concerts and recordings. For 2020-21, she is booked for two performances of the Tan Dun piano concerto with the Kindred Spirits Symphony Orchestra; and will record concertos for piano, violin and string orchestra by Canadians Christos Hatzis, Larysa Kuzmenko and Alice Ping Yee Ho with Sinfonia Toronto and Marc Djokic, violin. A new CD devoted to piano music by Alice Ping Yee Ho is also in the works. For her support of Canadian music, she received the 2007 Friends of Canadian Music Award from the Canadian Music Centre (CMC) and Canadian League of Composers. The CMC also selected her as one of its Ambassadors of Canadian music in 2009. As well, she was also a co- winner of the 2010 Harry Freedman Recording Award, from the CMC’s Harry Freedman Fund. Christina Quilico is a Full Professor of Piano Performance and Musicology at York University. Young operatic talent, too. is discovered and encouraged through her efforts. The Christina and Louis Quilico Award, which she founded in her husband’s memory, is administered by the Ontario Arts Foundation and held every two years under the auspices of the Canadian Opera Company.