TAMARA-ANNA CISLOWSKA, PIANO

Tamara-Anna Cislowska is one of Australia’s most acclaimed and recognised pianists. She has performed across five continents in repertoire spanning three centuries, from Scarlatti to Sculthorpe. Tamara is a winner of the 2012 Art Music Award for 'Performance of the Year (ACT)', in which she performed Elena Kats-Chernin’s Torque at the 2011 Canberra International Music Festival.

Giving her first public performance at age two playing Bartok, and commencing studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music four years later, Tamara gave her first orchestral performance at age eight. The youngest pianist to win ABC Young Performer of the Year at age 14, Tamara soon after toured Japan and the United States as cultural ambassador for Australia. In Australia she is the most awarded prizewinner at the Sydney Performing Arts Challenge, and has been recipient of the prestigious David Paul Landa Memorial Scholarship for pianists, and the Freedman Fellowship (2003) from the Music Council of Australia. Overseas, she has won international prizes in London, Italy and Greece.

Tamara was a founding member of the acclaimed Mozart Piano Quartet in Berlin, and toured to North and South America in this ensemble. She is a frequent guest of orchestras and festivals worldwide including the London Philharmonic, the New Zealand Symphony, and all the major Australian symphony orchestras as well as Pierre Cardin’s Festival de Lacoste and the Kurt Weill Festival in Europe. As a recitalist she has performed at the Purcell Room in London (earning acclaim as “skilful and poetic - a true artist” from The Times), the Frick Collection in New York, the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House and the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. Tamara is also regularly invited to collaborate with internationally renowned artists including composer Elena Kats-Chernin, tenor Kenneth Tarver, and violinist Lara St John.

As a recording artist, Tamara has received three ARIA nominations and critical acclaim (“a perfect combination of artistry and virtuosity,” The Strad), with six solo albums all featuring in the classical charts. She has recorded with the New Zealand Symphony and the London Philharmonic Orchestra (under Matthias Bamert) for Chandos and Naxos.

In 2011 Tamara performed solo recitals throughout Australia, and appeared in chamber performances with the Kingfisher Trio, members of the Australian World Orchestra, and acclaimed artists such as Amelia Farrugia, Louise Page and David Pereira. Engagements included the Musica Viva Festival, Canberra International Music Festival, ABC Classic’s Sunday Live series, and performances as member of the Australia Quartet, Piano Quartet in Residence at University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). She also performed solo recitals in Zurich and Bern, Switzerland, in November.

2012 engagements for Tamara include the Port Fairy Spring Festival, Soundstream Adelaide New Music Festival, Sydney Mozart Society, Melbourne Musicians and the ABC’s Sunday Live program, and with the Australia Quartet. In 2013 she returns as soloist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Youth Orchestras and performs solo and chamber recitals around Australia including for the MONA FOMA, Music by the Sea, Musica Viva and Canberra International Music Festivals, for ABC Sunday Live and at Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Recital Centre, Elder Hall.