Conor Hanick (piano) | Chamber Concert | Athenaeum Music & Arts Library | La Jolla (March 16)

Monday, March 16, 2026
7:30 PM

We eagerly welcome pianist Conor Hanick to the Athenaeum for the first time for an adventurous solo recital featuring Charles Ives’s monumental first sonata and two Schubert Impromptus paired with a new revision of Samuel Carl Adams’s Three Impromptus (a West Coast premiere) inspired by Schubert.

Program:
Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Two Impromptus, op. 142

Samuel Carl Adams (b. 1985)
Three Impromptus (2016, rev. 2025)

Intermission

Charles Ives (1874–1954)
Piano Sonata No. 1 (1902–1910)

Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master” (New York Times). Hanick has recently worked with conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ludovic Morlot, Alan Gilbert, and David Robertson; collaborated with the San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Juilliard Orchestra; and been presented by the Gilmore Festival, New York Philharmonic, Elbphilharmonie, De Singel, Centre Pompidou, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Park Avenue Armory, and Ojai Festival, where in 2022 with AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) he served as the festival’s artistic director.



A fierce advocate for the music of today, Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers ranging from Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, and Steve Reich to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Anthony Cheung, and Samuel Carl Adams, whose piano concerto No Such Spring he premiered in 2023 with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. This season Hanick presents solo and chamber recitals in the United States and Europe, including concerts at the Wallis, Cal Performances, Segerstrom Center, Stanford Live, Guild Hall, Musikverein, and elsewhere. He appears with the Phoenix and Alabama Symphonies; collaborates with Julia Bullock, Seth Parker Woods, Timo Andres, and the JACK Quartet; and premieres solo and chamber works by Tania León, Nico Muhly, Matthew Aucoin, and others.



Hanick is the director of solo piano at the Music Academy of the West and serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School, Mannes College, and the CUNY Graduate Center. He lives with his family in the Hudson Valley.

All concerts are preceded by a pre-concert talk at 6:45 p.m. and are followed by a reception with the artists in the Sharon & Joel Labovitz Entry Hall.