Christina Petrowska-Quilico

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'Christina Petrowska-Quilico (born December 30, 1948, Ottawa, ON) is a Canadian pianist, recognized as an innovative and adventurous artist and a leading champion of contemporary music. Second wife of canadian baritone Louis Quilico.

[edit] Career

Over the course of her career, Petrowska-Quilico has collaborated with a long list of eminent international and Canadian composers, including Violet Archer, Pierre Boulez, Glenn Buhr, John Cage, Christos Hatzis, Lowell Liebermann, Alexina Louie, R. Murray Schafter, Krzysztof Penderecki, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Claude Vivier and John Weinzweig. She has performed with most new music groups and chamber ensembles in Canada, as well as many outstanding orchestras including the Toronto and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestras, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Esprit Orchestra and Vancouver Chamber Orchestra. Her concert tours, both as soloist and with her late husband, the legendary Metropolitan Opera baritone Louis Quilico, have taken her across four continents. On the recital stage, her appearances include prestigious New York City venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall and Merkin Concert Hall.

Petrowska-Quilico's vast and diverse repertoire is reflected in more than 20 recordings of classical, romantic, new and world music, including a Juno-nominated CD with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and four CDs with Louis Quilico. Petrowska’s CD Virtuoso Piano Music of Our Time made its debut on the Space Shuttle Columbia with Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean. In September 2006, her recording of David Mott’s piano concerto “Eclipse” (which she premiered earlier in the year in a gala concert inaugurating the Recital Hall in York University’s Accolade Project) accompanied MacLean on the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Her latest recordings include the world premiere performances of the three-CD set of “Rivers” by Ann Southam as part of the Canadian Composer Portraits series, and the world premiere of a two-CD set of “16 Portraits – Romantic Etudes” by Michel-Georges Brégent, both on the Centrediscs label.

Petrowska-Quilico studied with Boris Berlin at the Royal Conservatory of Music, where she made her debut, with orchestra, at the age of 10. She studied at New York’s Juilliard School with Rosina Lhévinne, Jeaneane Dowis and Irwin Freundlich. From them, she acquired the formidable technique that allows her to learn challenging new works in very short time, and to perform them with dazzling virtuosity. At 14, she made her New York concert debut with full orchestra at Town Hall as a co-winner with fellow student Murray Perahia of the High School of the Performing Arts Concerto Competition. After graduation, she extended her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, and later in Darmstadt and Berlin with Karlheinz Stockhausen and György Ligeti.

Petrowska-Quilico is the author and artist of three published books, including Opera Illustrated: An Artistic Odyssey and Mr. Rigoletto: In Conversation with Louis Quilico. She is professor of piano and musicology in the Department of Music at York University.