Lauded for his “impassioned and vigorous” playing (Pianomania), pianist Evan Mitchell has established himself as a bold and versatile artist. Last season, Evan’s richly varied schedule of well over 50 appearances included solo recitals, concerti, chamber music, and performances as an orchestral keyboardist. His performances have been deemed “incredibly beautiful” (Fanfare), “amazing” (Fort Worth Weekly), and “no less than stunning” (Lima News). Evan’s recording of Claudio Santoro’s Sonata No. 4, “Fantasia” (1957) is featured on the 2012 CD release, “Piano de Pampa y Jungla: A Collection of Latin American Piano Music.” Evan’s performances have been heard in New York’s Steinway Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and in nine countries on four continents. His November 2012 recital on the PianoForte Foundation’s Salon Series Live was broadcast to 45,000 listeners on WFMT (Chicago) and streamed online. Additional performances have been broadcast on WFHB (Bloomington, IN) and FM 91 (Northwest Ohio). Evan has soloed in concerti with such ensembles as the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Lima Symphony Orchestra, and the Victoria Symphony, collaborated with conductors including Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Darryl One, Crafton Beck, Richard McKay, and David Effron, and has performed chamber music with members of the Cleveland and Brazilian Symphony Orchestras. Last season’s highlights included a recital for Chicago’s prestigious Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts and a concert in Shanghai’s 1,900-seat Oriental Art Center. Most recently, in January 2015 Evan made his debut with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Case Scaglione, Associate Conductor of the New York Philharmonic.
A passionate and articulate advocate for the arts, Evan looks constantly for ways to reach new audiences, and to inspire in others a love for music. The Texas Commission on the Arts recently named Evan to its 2014-16 Texas Touring Roster. This program provides grants to nonprofit presenters in order to fund performances by the state’s finest musicians, poets, visual artists, and more. In the 2014-15 season, Evan returns for a third year as a featured artist for Musical Awakenings®, the signature educational outreach program of the Van Cliburn Foundation, which exposes more than 30,000 public school students annually to classical music. Evan has also been heavily involved with DFW-based Open Classical, whose motto – “Music that’s dressed down, not dumbed down” – reflects a mission to present classical music in unconventional spaces and historically underserved neighborhoods. Among other honors, Evan has been awarded first prize in the Kingsville International Young Performers Competition, Five Towns Competition, PianoTexas International Festival Concerto Competition, and the Twelfth Annual Competition in the Performance of Music from Spain and Latin America, in which he was also awarded the Jacques Klein Prize for Best Performance of a Brazilian Solo Piano Work. He won Fifth Prize at the 2012 World Piano Competition, and has received additional recognition in the Schmidbauer International Young Artists Competition, Music Teachers National Association Competition, and the BNDES International Piano Competition. Evan won a special audience award in the final concert of the 2009 PianoFest series (Freiburg, Germany), and was featured in the Rising Stars concert of the 2008 Toronto Summer Music Festival.
A native of Montclair, New Jersey, Evan holds degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and is currently working toward his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Texas Christian University, where he studies with John Owings. His principal teachers have included Arnaldo Cohen and José Feghali, and he has worked with numerous artist-teachers including Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky, Barry Douglas, and Ann Schein. Evan also recently joined the faculty of Tarrant County College.