Born in Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His studies at the Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award.

Additionally, he attended Columbia University, where he majored in French. Emanuel Ax captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv and in 1979 he won the coveted Avery Fisher Prize in New York.

Three prominent duo collaborations will be carried through Mr. Ax’s current season. Beginning with the release of sonatas by Fauré and Strauss on the Deutsche Grammophon label, Mr. Ax will partner with long-time friend and colleague Itzhak Perlman for concerts in Kansas City, Ravinia, Dallas, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and La Jolla in the first half of the season. As an annual guest with the New York Philharmonic he will play Brahms with Alan Gilbert in addition to return visits to orchestras in Houston, Chicago, and Pittsburgh as well as duos in Philadelphia and New York with violinist Pamela Frank in a program of Mozart sonatas. Long-standing partner Yo-Yo Ma will join him in Norfolk, VA, Washington, DC and Carnegie Hall where they will program all the Beethoven sonatas for cello and piano. Solo recitals in Tokyo, Arizona, Florida, Texas and Boston will culminate in Carnegie Hall as part of the hall’s 125th anniversary celebrations in May.

European engagements in the 2015/16 season begin with a Winter period featuring concerts with the Orchestre de Paris, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and on tour with the London Symphony Orchestra in Germany. Emanuel then returns in early 2016 for concerts with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and his debut with the Accademia Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome. This season he will also return to the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Concertgebouworkest, Sinfonieorchester Basel and NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover. Recitals in Europe will include performances at the Klavier Festival Ruhr in Dusseldorf and Aldeburgh Festival among others.

Emanuel Ax has been an exclusive Sony Classical artist since 1987 and his notable recordings include the Grammy Award winning albums of Haydn piano sonatas and Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano with Yo-Yo   Ma.   Recent releases feature Mendelssohn’s trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, Strauss’s Enoch Arden narrated by Patrick Stewart, and discs of two-piano music by Brahms and Rachmaninov with Yefim Bronfman.   His other recordings include the concertos of Liszt and Schoenberg, Chopin and the premiere recording of John Adams’ Century Rolls with the Cleveland Orchestra (for Nonesuch), as well as three solo Brahms albums and an album of tangos by Astor Piazzolla. In 2013, his recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th century music/Piano).

In recent years, Emanuel Ax has turned his attention toward the music of 20th-century composers, premiering works by John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Krzysztof Penderecki, Bright Sheng, and Melinda Wagner. He is also devoted to chamber music, and has worked regularly with such artists as Young Uck Kim, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo, and the late Isaac Stern.

Emanuel Ax lives in New York with his wife, the pianist Yoko Nozaki, and they have two children, Joseph and Sarah. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Yale and Columbia Universities.