Biography

Noted by The Washington Post as a “truly admirable pianist,” Audrey Axinn appears regularly throughout the United States and Europe performing on early and modern keyboard instruments. 

Since her debut as a fortepianist in 1999 at the Boston Early Music Festival, Ms. Axinn has become a sought-after specialist in eighteenth-century music. Recent performances include Bargemusic and the Edinburgh International Festival. She has performed at the 92nd Street Y “Meet the Virtuoso” series and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as the Vleeshuis Museum in Antwerp; the Cappella de’Turchini in Naples; the Museum of Fine Arts in Nancy and the Willet-Holthuysen Museum in Amsterdam. Ms. Axinn performs as part of a four-hand keyboard duo with fortepianist Bart van Oort.

In 1996-97, Ms. Axinn studied fortepiano and eighteenth-century performance practice in the Netherlands as a recipient of Fulbright and Netherland-American Foundation Scholarships. Her teachers have included Stanley Hoogland, Malcolm Bilson, and Jos van Immerseel.

As a modern pianist and collaborative artist, Ms. Axinn has performed at major New York venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Caramoor Festival. Ms. Axinn has partnered with numerous exceptional performers including Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Eugene Fodor, Matt Haimovitz and Daniel Heifetz . She has recorded works of Ibert, Milhaud, and David Amram with the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra for the Koch International and Newport Classics labels, and was a featured soloist in a recording of Vaughan Williams for BMG. She has been heard in broadcasts on New York's classical music station WQXR and the National Public Radio network, and has been interviewed on the Leonard Lopate and John Schaefer shows on WNYC.

From 2001 to 2004, Ms. Axinn was the co-Director of Lyceum, an historical instrument series in New York City that presented thematically provocative programs. Ms. Axinn was the Artistic Director of the Clementi 250th birthday Keyboard Extravaganza conference and marathon concert in 2002 at the Graduate Center of City University of New York. From 1998 to 2000, along with pianist Samuel Sanders, she was the Artistic Director of 20th Century Retrospectives, a concert and lecture series co-sponsored by Rockefeller University and The Juilliard School.

Ms. Axinn currently teaches fortepiano, chamber music and collaborative piano at The Juilliard School. She lectures and gives master classes in all three disciplines. She holds a Masters degree and a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School, as well as degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music and Manhattan School of Music. Her teachers have included Zitta Zohar, Samuel Sanders, Margo Garrett and Vladimir Sokoloff. She lives in New York City.