Garnet Ungar
Associate Professor of Piano

Garnet Ungar has appeared throughout North America as piano soloist with orchestra, in recitals and masterclasses at major universities, and in solo and chamber broadcasts on Public Radio and the CBC. He has also performed in Switzerland, Sweden, and England, and his recording of the Brahms Second Piano Concerto with the Varna Philharmonic in Bulgaria was described in John Bell Young's in Clavier Magazine review* as "powerful and precise…having solidity and passion, a magisterial presence, structural integrity, immediacy and intensity." 2008 will see the issue of his second CD, of Schubert works, and a solo recital for the American Liszt Society in New York City.

Dr. Ungar has served on the piano faculties of Mount Royal College in Calgary and the University Settlement House in Toronto. He currently serves as Associate Professor of Piano at the University of Evansville in Indiana and served on the piano faculty of the Music at Maple Mount Summer Institute in Kentucky. He regularly adjudicates piano competitions including, most recently, the Hong Kong Schools Music Festival. In demand as a private teacher, for the last three years in a row his students have won first place in the Evansville Philharmonic Competition, have been finalists in the Indianapolis Symphony Competition, and have won several other important local and state competitions.

Born in Montréal, Québec, Dr. Ungar obtained degrees in piano performance from the Universities of Toronto, Calgary, and Houston, where his principal teachers were William Aide, Marilyn Engle, Abbey Simon, and Ruth Tomfohrde. Additional studies include sessions at the Royal Conservatory of Toronto, where he obtained an Associate Performer's diploma, with Marek Jablonski at the Banff School of Fine Arts, Marc Durand and Anton Kuerti at the Centre d'Arts Orford in Québec, and Bernard Ebert at the Académie de Musique de Sion in Switzerland. His hobbies include web design, rebuilding plumbing and electrical systems, and working on his dairy farm.

*Few recordings of the Brahms Piano Concerto # 2 in B-flat… quite equaled the breathtaking intensity that Richter brought to the work, that is, until now. Garnet Ungar…delivers a performance at once powerful and precise. From the opening duet between horn and piano, followed by Brahms's cadenza introduction, Ungar wastes no time establishing a magisterial presence. His playing is specific: each motive is shaped with an identity of its own that remains memorable for the duration of the work, giving the musical material structural integrity. The solidity and passion of Ungar's Brahms has much in common with Richter, but it is no imitation. On the contrary, he is his own man, lending its oceanic form and fistfuls of chord progressions immediacy and intensity. Rarely has the scherzo sounded more robust and urgent, or its compulsive surges so compelling. Ungar finds every opportunity to drive the music forward without taking either motivic material or passagework for granted.
        -John Bell Young in Clavier

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