American virtuoso pianist Bryan Wallick

American virtuoso pianist Bryan Wallick will perform Sunday, Jan. 21, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The UAB Piano Series brings the world’s finest pianists to Birmingham. The series, presented by the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music, is directed by Distinguished Professor of Piano and Artist-in-Residence Yakov Kasman, DMA, a Van Cliburn medalist.

Wallick will perform a program he calls “The Virtuosic Fugue,” Kasman says, and it will be a very diverse program culminating with one of Beethoven’s most important piano sonatas.

“The ‘Hammerklavier’ has never been performed in our UAB Piano Series in my more than 20 years directing it,” Kasman said. “Not too many pianists dare to program it because of its difficulty. It ends with a ferociously demanding fugue to complete the theme of this most impressive recital program.”

The 4 p.m. performance will be in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, Reynolds-Kirschbaum Concert Hall.

Wallick is gaining recognition as one of the greats of his generation. Gold medalist of the 1997 Vladimir Horowitz International Piano Competition in Kyiv, he made his New York recital debut in 1998 at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and made his Wigmore Hall recital debut in London in 2003. He has also performed at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall with the London Sinfonietta and at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church and with symphonies, orchestras and festivals in the United States, Europe and South Africa. An avid chamber musician, he has recently joined the Mendelssohn Trio, which is in residence at Colorado State University, and most recently performed with them on a European tour in September 2022, visiting Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

He has performed his latest recital project, “Virtuosic Fugue,” for the Grand Teton Music Festival, University of Texas El Paso, Scottsdale Center in Arizona, Ravinia Festival, Xavier Piano Series, Tri-C Classical Series at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and throughout South Africa. “Virtuosic Fugue (Vol. 1)” was recorded for Navona Records and released in July 2023.

Wallick sees colors with each musical pitch, and he was given a grant in 2006 by the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts to explore his synesthetic realities in a multimedia project that allows the audience to see the colors he experiences while performing. Synesthesia is the ability to experience two or more sensory experiences with one stimulus.

He studied with Jerome Lowenthal in New York City, where he was the first Juilliard School graduate to receive both an undergraduate Honors Diploma, in 2000, and an accelerated master’s degree the next year. Wallick continued his studies with Christopher Elton in London at the Royal Academy of Music. He is assistant professor of piano at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he lives with his wife and three children.