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Pianist, composer, and event organizer Michael Arnowitt is one of the most creative musicians of today. Throughout a wide-ranging career of international performance, he has been recognized for presenting imaginative concert experiences that explore the intersections of music with other senses and art forms. He is best known for the beauty, clarity and elegance of his musical ideas, for his extraordinary sense of touch at the piano bringing forth new colors and articulations from the instrument like a painter’s varied brushstrokes, and for his natural and warm on-stage manner with audiences of all ages. He lives primarily in Toronto, Canada with a second home base in Vermont in the United States, and has given piano performances in France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Russia, and Korea. His life and music is the subject of a documentary “Beyond 88 Keys” by the American filmmaker Susan Bettmann. The documentary, filmed in both the USA and Europe, contains footage of concert performances, educational talks, and interviews. The film has been broadcast on public television and shown at a variety of film festivals and venues including the Rode Pomp, an arts center in Gent, Belgium and the Anthology, a theater in New York City’s East Village, and is available online on the Vimeo platform.
His past creative projects have included “If Music Be the Food of Love,” where classical and jazz music about food were performed while the food tastes that inspired the composers were served to the audience, and “Simultaneous Improvisations: Music and Painting,” a collaboration combining his piano improvisations with the live creation of paintings on stage by four visual artists. In 2013, his composition “Haiku Textures” for three cello soloists and orchestra was premiered, the three cellos symbolizing the three lines of a Japanese haiku poem. He has also performed with the photographer Marjorie Ryerson a special multi-media program “Water Music” where piano music about water is presented together with the projection of water photographs and readings on the subject of water written by leading musicians of today.
In 1989 Michael Arnowitt began his novel, 26-year long presentation of the complete 32 Beethoven piano sonatas, matching up his age as he performed the various sonatas with Beethoven’s age as Beethoven composed them. The eight concerts in the project, spaced out over 26 years, thereby became a study in the psychology of aging and development. Audiences have seen how Beethoven developed as a composer, how Arnowitt developed as a pianist, and the intersection of the two processes. He has performed these “Beethoven & Arnowitt” concerts throughout the United States and in Canada, Korea, and Germany.
Michael Arnowitt has appeared as piano concerto soloist with many orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Ukraine-based Kyiv Chamber Orchestra under Roman Kofman. He has performed in concert with the Ying Quartet, and has toured Canada and the United States giving duo performances with Beverley Johnston of Toronto, one of the world’s leading classical percussionists. The Washington Post said of a special concert Michael Arnowitt performed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., “he played with an exquisite sense of touch, color and musical imagination.” The Rheinische Post said of a Michael Arnowitt performance in Düsseldorf, Germany, “he played with a striking virtuosity and deeply felt passion.”
Michael Arnowitt has also been the principal organizer of a number of large-scale fundraisers for humanitarian aid, among them an April 1999 benefit concert for Balkan war refugees that raised over US $10,000 and collected clothing and 300 emergency first aid kits for the refugee camps. In 2016 he organized a benefit concert for Syrian refugees, creating a special program surveying Syria’s diverse cultures, with thirty performers presenting Syrian secular and sacred music, poetry, short stories, and drama.
His current projects include developing an exciting new concept of a multi-sensory performance event, “Sense and Sound,” where he is collaborating with a scent artist, textiles designer, chef, botanist, and a wood sculptor. In this innovative concert, while Michael Arnowitt performs selected pieces of classical music at the piano, the audience will simultaneously receive paired experiences prepared by his artistic collaborators in all the senses – touch, smell, sight, and taste. In addition to his role as pianist, in this project Michael Arnowitt is “sensory choreographing” the overall shape and progression of what the audience will experience as a piece of music flows and its character changes from section to section. Michael Arnowitt is also working on a book of essays about music, “What Makes Great Music Great,” to be published by the Vermont-based Fomite Press. These essays will offer insights about moments in his favorite pieces of piano and orchestral music along with anecdotes from his life as a touring concert pianist.
Michael Arnowitt is truly a unique individual voice as a pianist. He brings his sensitive artistic nature to create music that is highly expressive, deeply personal and emotionally moving. His performance style is well-rounded: he can play with great liveliness exciting, rhythmic music, but he also has a lyrical side to his playing that audiences have described as warm and resonant. The great French flutist Louis Moyse commented after attending one of Michael Arnowitt’s concerts that his playing had “grandeur,” meaning a rare quality of grandness and depth of feeling. The heart of any performance is the communication to the audience of the human emotions and experiences embodied in the music, feelings that are universal to us all. Michael Arnowitt wishes to break down the barrier between performer and audience, and has been told by concertgoers that his music gives the audience a special communal feeling as if they were together onstage with him.
Michael Arnowitt’s concerts are more than just concerts. An added dimension frequently praised by audiences is the delightful and thought-provoking spoken commentary he offers at his concerts, where he shares engaging anecdotes and illuminating insights about the composers’ lives and the social and historical context of the world at the time these works of art were created. To further personalize who he is to the audience, the pianist sprinkles in here and there some thoughts about why a certain piece on the program excites and appeals to him, all delivered in a relaxed, congenial manner which has delighted audiences in concert halls large and small around the world. People who attend Michael Arnowitt’s concerts frequently tell him afterwards how much they enjoy these spoken commentaries and how greatly they add to their overall experience of the concert.
The internationally-known flutist and composer Louis Moyse said while in his 90’s:
“During my long musical career, I have met few really great artists in the various disciplines of the field and I am very pleased to name Michael Arnowitt, pianist and musician as one of them. He expresses his art on the highest level. I have great respect for his interpretations and his way to communicate to any audience his feelings through his love for music.”
Since 1997, Michael Arnowitt has maintained a website at www.MAPiano.com which contains news on his music activities and upcoming performances as well as a number of his writings on musical topics. He can be found on social media on the Facebook, Instagram, and Mastodon platforms and has a YouTube channel “Michael Arnowitt Music.”