Gabriela Montero

Piano

Biography

Gabriela Montero’s visionary interpretations and unique compositional gifts have garnered her critical acclaim and a devoted following on the world stage. Anthony Tommasini remarked in The New York Times that “Montero’s playing had everything: crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power…soulful lyricism…unsentimental expressivity.”

Montero’s 2023-2024 season will feature performances of her own “Latin Concerto” on an extensive US tour with Mexico City’s Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería and Carlos Miguel Prieto, as well as with the New World Symphony (Stéphane Denève), Polish National Radio Symphony (Marin Alsop), Antwerp Symphony (Elim Chan), and National Arts Centre Orchestra (Alexander Shelley), the latter with which she continues a flourishing four-year Creative Partnership through 2025. In May 2024, Montero also makes her highly anticipated return to Los Angeles to work with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Jaime Martín.

Montero’s other recent highlights include a European tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, as well as debuts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, and the Minnesota Orchestra, where “Montero’s gripping performance…made a case that she might become the classical scene’s next great composer/pianist” (Star Tribune). Other recent highlights include residencies with the Sao Paolo Symphony, Prague Radio Symphony, Basel Symphony, and at the (partially COVID-disrupted) Rheingau Festival; debuts at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, New York’s 92nd Street Y, Paris’s Philharmonie and La Seine Musicale, and the London Piano Festival at King’s Place; and the launch of “Gabriela Montero at Prager”, an ongoing artistic residency established at the Prager Family Center for the Arts in Easton, Maryland.

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Reviews

“…And that comes through in her ‘Latin’ Concerto. It’s a work at turns invigorating, haunting, sorrowful and thrilling. Montero’s gripping performance with conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto and the Minnesota Orchestra made a case that she might become the classical scene’s next great composer/pianist.”

Rob Hubbard

Star Tribune

“Montero’s playing had everything: crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power in climactic moments, soulful lyricism in the ruminative passages and, best of all, unsentimental expressivity”

Anthony Tommasini

New York Times

More Reviews

 

“Montero’s playing had everything: crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power in climactic moments, soulful lyricism in the ruminative passages and, best of all, unsentimental expressivity”

Anthony Tommasini, New York Times

“Gabriela Montero is a Venezuelan ball of fire […] she extracted more downhome sweetness from the lyrical parts of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor than I have heard in a long time, but her attack was still tigerish when required. “

Independent

“Montero’s sound is almost miraculously sumptuous and luscious; her phrasing gives a sense of both extension and suspension. She played the noir-ish first movement with a cinematographer’s sense of light and shadow, while the second movement floated by in simple innocence, like the most beautiful pale-blue dream from your childhood. Montero’s masterfully improvised cadenzas in the first and second movement harken back to an era when such skill and creativity were the norm for concert pianists.”

Ottwa Citizen

“Montero played the piano part in the Piazzolla with crisp athleticism. In Mozart’s E flat Concerto, K449, her tone was rather more full and forceful, but the contrapuntal finale had irresistible rhythmic clarity. As a solo encore, Montero characteristically asked the audience for a tune she could play with and duly delivered a thunderously virtuosic set of improvisations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”

The Guardian 

“Montero galvanized the audience through her performances of Brahms, Lecuona, Ginastera and her own improvisations [formed by taking motif suggestions from the audience]. These spontaneous compositions are steeped in expression and feeling. The audience were dazzled by her impeccable displays of compositional excellence. Montero exposes the world’s loss of improvisation and virtuosic composition.”

Peter Korfmacher, Leipziger Volkszeitung 

“Gabriela Montero demonstrated exceptional mastery, and seeing such music created in front of your own eyes was an absolutely unique experience… there are not many artists about whom it can truly be said that their talent borders on genius.”

Antoine Leboyer, ConcertoNet.com 

“The piano recital by Gabriela Montero at the Vienna Konzerthaus was like a visit from outer space. First… the Venezuelan pianist immersed herself completely in the three interludes, Op 117 by Johannes Brahms – and then presented a massive version of Franz Liszt’s B minor Sonata, played already like music that was invented that very moment. Gruff and brooding in detail, with calm and overview of the architectural design Montero upheld an almost unbearable tension during the gigantic work…”

Der Standard 

“Montero is the sort of artist whom classical music lovers should most appreciate. “

concertonet.com