ADAM GOLKA

Adam Golka was born of Polish parents in the United States in 1987. He began studying both the piano and the violin at the age of four, and continued to study both equally until deciding to become a pianist at the age of nine. Adam gave his first recital at the age of nine, and first performance of a concerto with orchestra at ten. Now sixteen years old, Adam has performed recitals in Chicago, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., as well as in The Netherlands and in Poland. He has also performed concertos with the Houston Symphony, the Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra, the Warsaw Jeneusses Musicales Orchestra, and the Bydgoszcz Musical Impressions Festival Orchestra, amongst others; conductors he has collaborated with include German Gutiérrez, Ian Hobson, Mariusz Smolij, as well as his brother, Tomasz Golka.

In November 2003, Adam was named the First Prize winner of the 2^nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition. He also received the Concerto Prize, voted by the audience after his performance in the finals of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto with conductor Yang Yang and the French Poitou-Charentes Symphony Orchestra.

Adam has also had prizes in numerous other international and national competitions, including the First Julia Crane International Young Artists Piano Competition, the Missouri Southern International Piano Competition, the Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition of Corpus Christi, the Kingsville International Concerto Competition and Isabel Scionti Piano Solo Contest, and the M.T.N.A./Baldwin Piano Performance Contest. He was a winner of auditions that permitted him to be a regular performer in the Houston Young Artists’ Concerts series for four consecutive seasons.

Currently, Adam lives in Fort Worth, where he is a full scholarship student in the Artist Diploma Program at the Texas Christian University; his teacher is José Feghali, former gold medallist of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In his first semester of studies there, Adam won the annual concerto competition, and as a result performed with the TCU Symphony.

His previous studies include those with Dariusz Pawlas in the Preparatory Program of Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, as well as with his mother and first teacher, Anna Karczewska-Golka.

Adam’s performing repertoire spans from Bach to Bolcom, and includes 24 Etudes of Chopin, the 3 Sonatas of Brahms, and about twenty concertos (Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Lutoslawski, Gershwin). His first commercial recording, “New Music - New Pianist”, containing the solo piano works of composer Jarosław Golembiowski, was released in April of 2002. 

His future engagements include recitals in China and France, a recital for the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts Series in Chicago, and concerto appearances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Sinfonia Varsovia.

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