Antoinette Perry

Antoinette Perry, born into a family of professional musicians, gave her first public performance at the age of 4. Since then she has concertized extensively throughout the United States, Germany, France, England, and in over 15 cities of the People’s Republic of China. She has been heard often on NPR and the Bravo! Channel, and has recorded for the Crystal, Harmonie, Pacific Rainbow, Pacific Serenades, Excelsior, and Navona labels. Her first solo album, BEETHOVEN BOOKENDS, was released under Navona Records in 2021.

Le Dauphine Libéré has lauded her “irreproachable technique” and “a musical comprehension which could only belong to one of the Greats.” Germaine Vadi of Les Affiches de Grenoble et du Dauphine wrote, “One felt oneself to be in the presence of a great pianist — an absolute art of nuance, her subtle touch, and finally her perfect musical understanding, which permits her to assimilate the music of all cultures.” The LA Times has praised her “exceptional artistry” (Bruce Burroughs), her “superb Schubert in every respect” (Albert Goldberg), and, in a performance with the LA Mozart Orchestra, “The centerpiece was Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G, K. 543, in a wonder of pertinent, pointed musicality…expressive…richly detailed…”(John Hanken).

Artist-faculty Emeritus at the Aspen Music Festival and School, Perry performed in over 100 concerts during her 25-year tenure. Other festivals include Bravo! International, Lansum International, Zhengzhou International, Saarburg International, Idyllwild Arts Academy, Chamber Music Sedona, Ojai Festival, Taipei International, 20th Century Unlimited in Santa Fe, and the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival.

As a young artist she was one of only two women representing the United States (seven women world-wide) in the 6th Van Cliburn International Competition (1981) and subsequently received a fellowship to the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood. A highlight of her later career was the opportunity to perform the Mozart Double and Triple Concerti with Leon Fleisher, Katherine Jacobson, and the Aspen Chamber Symphony, to commemorate the Aspen Music Festival’s 150th anniversary and Leon Fleisher’s 75th birthday.

As a chamber musician, Perry has collaborated with many of the world’s greatest artists, including John Perry, Leon Fleisher, Brooks Smith, Ralph Kirshbaum, Ronald Leonard, David Shifrin, Eugene Fodor, Henri Temianka, Joachin Valdepenas, Carol Wincenc, and actors Michael York, and Walter Matthau. She has performed with members of the American, Chicago, Cleveland, Emerson, Juilliard, Angeles, Paganini, Sequoia, and Takács String Quartets, with concertmasters of the Chicago Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Hague Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, Baltimore Philharmonic, and the Orpheus, Los Angeles, and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestras, as well as principals of the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, the Gulbenkian and Zurich Tonnehalle Orchestras, the Toronto and San Francisco Symphonies, and the Los Angeles, Stuttgart and Saarbrücken Operas. Other collaborators were faculty members at Juilliard, Eastman School, Manhattan School, Peabody Institute, Beijing Central Conservatory, Seoul National University, Glenn Gould Conservatory in Toronto, R.D. Colburn School, the Shepherd School at Rice, and the Universität der Künste in Berlin. In Los Angeles she collaborates regularly with members of the USC and UCLA faculties and prominent film industry musicians.

She also enjoys bringing new music to audiences, having premiered works by Michael Patterson, Roger Bourland, Mark Carlson, Steven Christopher Sacco, John Steinmetz, Bevan Manson, Donald Keats, Roland E. Curb, and Chikako Iverson.

Perry served on the UCLA piano faculty for 12 years before joining the faculty of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music in 1996, where she currently teaches. She has given over 200 master classes, most notably at the Eastman School of Music and as artist-in-residence for a week at the Beijing Central Conservatory. Former students are enjoying successful careers as performers and pedagogues throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. The California Association of Professional Music Teachers awarded her their 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Her wonderful teachers have included John Perry, Carlo Zecchi, Gilbert Kalish, Richard Goode, Danielle Martin, and Richard Angeletti. As a child she was surrounded with the beautiful, rich sounds of her pianist mother, Lillian Haslach Teddlie, her bass-baritone father, Paul Krueger, and later her step-father, baritone Antonio Perez.

She is the proud mother of Sean, Maureen, and Michael Perry, and currently lives, hikes, reads and practices yoga in Altadena CA.