Joanne Polk

Pianist Joanne Polk has been noted for her performances and recordings of music by female composers. She is also a noted educator. Polk began playing the piano at age four and, as a girl, had no particular desire to pursue this specialty. Polk studied at the Juilliard School in New York, receiving Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees there, and she went on for a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music. Her turn toward music by women came after she heard a performance of a work, Parable, by composer <a href="spotify:artist:3WSgQRWUXopLCKNemxWkYo">Judith Lang Zaimont</a> and sought out the composer. <a href="spotify:artist:3WSgQRWUXopLCKNemxWkYo">Zaimont</a> inspired Polk to do research on the subject and to identify a large literature of neglected music.

Polk's debut recording came as accompanist to soprano Korliss Uecker on the 1992 album Completely Clara, devoted to music by <a href="spotify:artist:2yzaWNFV3cxmcRZtwtr5WC">Clara Schumann</a>. In the '90s and 2000s, she devoted several recordings to American composer <a href="spotify:artist:1QeC5GwDENQv78O3PCLeZB">Amy Beach</a>; one of those, Songs of Amy Beach, recorded with baritone Patrick Mason, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Polk has issued two albums of <a href="spotify:artist:3WSgQRWUXopLCKNemxWkYo">Zaimont</a>'s music, Zones (1997) and Callisto (2003), as well as two devoted to works by <a href="spotify:artist:2Wj0NreQeOfrGxnPIaLcCi">Fanny Mendelssohn</a>. She co-founded Manhattan in the Mountains, a three-week summer music festival in the Catskill Mountains devoted to chamber music, solo performing, and community engagement, in 2012. Signed to the Steinway & Sons label, she released The Flatterer, featuring music by composer <a href="spotify:artist:6yb2PUxafSVe2441W50jbk">Cécile Chaminade</a>, which reached the number one position on the Billboard classical sales chart in 2014. In 2017, Polk released Gershwin & Wild, an album of music by <a href="spotify:artist:12Fk4SuKXPe97FaSVD6WHK">Earl Wild</a> that represented her first album of music exclusively by a male composer. She returned in 2020 on <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Steinway+%26+Sons%22">Steinway & Sons</a> with the album Louise Farrenc: Etudes & Variations for solo piano, and the following year she released Social Flutterby: Piano Music of David Shenton.

Her albums Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn and The Flatterer were included on a list of Essential Piano Recordings in 2019 issued by New York radio station WQXR. Polk is a member of the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and has taught master classes at the Summit Music Festival, the New York Summer Music Festival, and several universities. Musical America magazine has included Polk in a listing of 30 Profiles in Courage in the musical world. ~ James Manheim, Rovi