Photograph © Ellen Crane

Mathew Fuerst is currently a third-year doctoral student at The Juilliard School, studying with John Corigliano. Mr. Fuerst began piano lessons at the age of seven. At age thirteen, he made his orchestral debut performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2. In 1992, he enrolled at the Interlochen Arts Academy, beginning formal composition lessons and continuing to perform. Mr. Fuerst’s Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra was commissioned by Interlochen and premiered by the composer on a National Public Radio broadcast in 1993. Later that year, he performed the Ravel Piano Concerto in G.

In 1995, Mr. Fuerst continued his training at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied piano with Alan Feinberg and composition with David Liptak, Christopher Rouse, Joseph Schwantner, Sydney Hodkinson, and Augusta Read Thomas. After graduating with a bachelor of music degree in 1999, he spent the summer in Paris at La Schola Cantorum, studying with Samuel Adler.

Mr. Fuerst enrolled at The Juilliard School in the master of music degree program in 1999, studying with Robert Beaser. During a tour of Scotland funded by the School in the summer of 2000, a chamber group from the School premiered his Chaconne for piano quartet. In 2001, Mr. Fuerst was a co-winner of Juilliard's Palmer-Dixon Prize for his Sonata-Fantasie No. 1 for piano and violin. That same year, his composition Portrait was performed at Alice Tully Hall by The Juilliard Symphony under Jeffery Milarsky, a piece for which he received his second Palmer-Dixon Prize in 2002. The work was later selected for the Whitaker Competition and read by Steven Sloan’s The American Composers Orchestra. Mr. Fuerst’s music has been performed in concerts at Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall, and the Miller Theatre in New York City, as well as concert halls in Montreal, Paris, Houston, Pennsylvania. His Sonata-Fantasie No. 1 will be performed and broadcast in an upcoming nation-wide broadcast on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio.