Kristin Okerlund, Piano

Kristin Okerlund, Piano
Kristin Okerlund, Piano

KRISTIN OKERLUND studied at the St. Louis Conservatory of Music, the University of Illinois and at the Vienna Conservatory of Music. Her teachers include John Wustman, Ian Hobson, Jane Allen and Leonid Brumberg.

 

She has won many piano competitions and has played as a soloist with numerous orchestras. As a soloist, chamber musician and as an accompanist, Ms. Okerlund has been heard in the USA, USSR, China, Japan, Nigeria, Lybia, France, Spain, Germany, Austria … Since 1993 she is a solo coach/accompanist at the “Vienna State Opera”. Since 1992 she holds a teaching position at the Vienna Conservatory of Music and since 2000 Ms. Okerlund has her own opera coaching class.

 

She has given concerts with Bernd Weikl, Walter Berry, Samuel Ramey, Leo Nucci, William Warfield, Johan Botha, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Nancy Gustafson, Andrea Rost, Angelika Kirchschlager, Ildiko Raimondi, Heinz Zednik, Carlos Alvarez, Neil Shicoff, Giuseppe Sabbatini, Bo Skovhus, Edita Gruberova, Heidi Brunner, Janina Baechle, Norbert Ernst among others. Conductors with whom Ms. Okerlund has worked include Sir Georg Solti, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Christoph von Dohnány, Seiji Ozawa, Mstislav Rostropovich, Marcello Viotti, Bertrand de Billy and Franz Welser-Möst. She works regularily with the greates singers of our time.

 

In the past years several CD productions have been released. One with Heidi Brunner, Bertrand de Billy and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, a recording of “Winterreise” by Franz Schubert with Constantin Graf von Walderdorff as well as two CDs produced by Milken Archives with Ana Maria Martinez. The last recording to be published was a Lieder CD with Norbert Ernst. Chamber music concerts with Werner Hink, the concert master of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with Roger Salander and the Ensemble Wien-Petersburg, as well as concerts from 1999-2011 in Chicago for the “Over the Rainbow Association” with Nancy Gustafson, Bo Skovus, Richard Leech, Samuel Ramey, Denyce Graves and Sylvia McNair were also included in her calendar.

 

In August of 2007, Ms. Okerlund was on the teaching staff of the Zhou Xiao Yan Opera Center of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music summer masterclasses. Also in Shanghai Ms. Okerlund recorded a CD with Mr. Liao Changyong, the leading baritone in China. Afterwards she received an invitation from the China Shanghai International Arts Festival to present the CD in concert.

 

In 2008 Ms. Okerlund had concerts among others in Santiago de Compostela, in Bremen with Janina Baechle at the Theater am Goetheplatz and in the summer of 2009 Ms. Okerlund was personally invited by Maestro Lorin Maazel to be on the staff at the Chateauville Foundation Festival in Castleton Virginia. She also had concerts in Chicago, Knoxville and Huntsville with Samuel Ramey, Sylvia McNair, Jonathan Beyer and Nancy Gustafson. In January 2010 Ms. Okerlund toured the USA playing recitals for the Marilyn Horne Foundation. In the summer of 2010 she was the assistant of Maestro de Billy at the Salzburg Festival for “Jeanne d`Arc” with Fanny Ardant (before at the Wiener Musikverein with Johanna Wokalek). In October she was engaged by the Theater an der Wien for “Ariadne auf Naxos“. She has also performed this difficult piano part among others with Giuseppe Sinopoli in Yokohama and Christoph von Dohnány at the Théatre des Champs Elysées in Paris and at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. December brought her to the Wiener Musikverein and Palais Liechtenstein with José Cura and Natalia Ushakova and Chicago with Sylvia McNair and Nancy Gustafson.

 

January of 2011 marked her debut at Carnegie Hall under the auspices of the Marilyn Horne Foundation and she appeared again in Chicago as well as at the Castleton Festival of Lorin Maazel. In January and February 2012 she was invited back by the Marilyn Horne Foundation in cooperation with Carnegie Hall in New York. Recently she has appeared several times with “The Philharmonics” - also for Television.

 

2013 two recitals are scheduled at the Wiener Musikverein. One with the soprano Valentina Nafornita and one with the tenor Norbert Ernst. In August she will appear with Piotr Beczala at the Festival Castell de Peralada and in December at the Wiener Konzerthaus with José Cura for his austrian recital debut.

 

 

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