Xak Bjerken

Pianist Xak Bjerken has appeared with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Thailand Philharmonic Orchestras, The Schoenberg Ensemble, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Disney Hall. He has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Konzerthaus in Berlin as well as at Alice Tully Hall, Weill Hall and the Kennedy Center. For many years, he performed throughout the US as a member of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet and has performed with the Cuarteto Casals, the Prazak, New Zealand, and Miami string quartets, amongst others, and held chamber music residencies at the Tanglewood Music Center, Spoleto Festival and Olympic Music Festival. he is currently the director of Ensemble X, a new music ensemble, and has performed at festivals in France, Germany, and Hungary, and served on the faculty of Kneisel Hall, the Eastern Music Festival, and at the Chamber Music Conference at Bennington College.   Bjerken has worked closely with composers Győrgy Kurtag, Gubaidulina, Steven Stucky, George Benjamin, Steven Hartke, and many others. He released his first solo recording on CRI in 2001, and has since recorded for Koch International, Chandos, Albany Records, Artona, and a recent disc of music pairing works by Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra with Schubert and Schumann released by Open G Records. Xak Bjerken is Professor of Music at Cornell University where, with his wife, Miri Yampolsky, he co-directs Mayfest, an international chamber music festival. Bjerken studied with Aube Tzerko at the University of California at Los Angeles and received his Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the Peabody Conservatory as a student of and teaching assistant to Leon Fleisher.