Paul Posnak’s international career as a concert pianist, recording artist, transcriber and sought-after teacher began as a child prodigy with a full scholarship to the Juilliard Preparatory School of Music at the age of eight. Recipient of Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral degrees at Juilliard, and of the Loeb Prize (Juilliard’s highest award), he won First Prizes in the International J.S. Bach Competition and the Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York. He has performed at the White House, The Supreme Court (earning high praise from no less than Ruth Bader Ginsburg), and The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at Carnegie Recital Hall and Tully Hall in New York, and throughout Europe, South America, and Asia to critical acclaim. As a collaborative artist, Dr. Posnak has worked with many world-renowned vocalists, including Luciano Pavarotti, Sandra Lopez, Jennie Tourel, Barbara Hendricks, and Lisa Vroman (the original Christine in “Phantom of the Opera”).
Dr. Posnak is internationally renowned for his improvisations and transcriptions of the great jazz pianist-composers of the 1920’s and 1930’s. His note-for-note reconstructions of the brilliant solo improvisations of George Gershwin and Thomas “Fats” Waller from the old studio recordings and radio broadcasts have established him as a world authority. His 18 recordings for EMI, Naxos, Vox, Arabesque, Centaur and the Yamaha Disklavier Artist Series have received high praise from the leading international press. Of his CD, Gershwin’s Piano Improvisations, The Washington Post said: “It is remarkably like having Gershwin himself in digital stereo.” Clavier said of his CD, “Ain’t Misbehavin”: “he breezes through the hard-to-play passages with all the facility and verve of Liszt”.
His performance of Gershwin works as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center was described by The Washington Post as playing “with respect and passion . . . as notable for their musicality and their artistic integrity as they were for their pianism.” Engagements in Europe and Japan include residencies at the Akademie Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, the Académie Pianistique Internationale in Aix-en-Provence, Festival St. Cere in Quercy, France, and most recently, a three-week tour of Japan. He is the Founding Artistic Director of the St. Martha-Yamaha Concert Series in Miami Shores, FL.