Christina Petrowska Quilico

The Canadian Encyclopedia calls Christina Petrowska Quilico, C.M., OOnt, FRSC, “one of Canada’s most celebrated pianists. Equally adept at Classical, Romantic and Contemporary repertoires…she is also a noted champion of Canadian composers.” She was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2020 “for her celebrated career as a classical and contemporary pianist, and for championing Canadian music” and to the Order of Ontario in 2022 “for opening the ears of music lovers through her performances and recordings, her teaching at York University and her establishment of The Christina and Louis Quilico Award at the Ontario Arts Foundation and Canadian Opera Company.” She was also inducted in 2021 into the Royal Society of Canada, “the country’s highest honor an individual can achieve in the Arts, Social Sciences and Sciences.” In September 2023, the Ontario Arts Council named her winner of its Oskar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Performance for having “reached a degree of international attention through appearances in other countries, and/or through broadcast and recordings,” with the jury asserting, “She is a legend.” 

Previous distinctions include Friends of Canadian Music Award from the Canadian Music Centre and Canadian League of Composers, and being named one of the CMC’s Ambassadors of Canadian Music. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation chose her as one of “Canada’s 25 best classical pianists” and inducted her into its “In Concert Hall of Fame” celebrating the greatest Canadian classical musicians of all time, past and present. 

Among Petrowska Quilico’s 60 albums are 19 concertos and solo and chamber works by Canadian and international composers, many of them women — notably Canada’s Ann Southam, whose music she has recorded on eight releases. Four of her albums have earned JUNO Awards nominations, three of them for concerto albums, and one for Southam’s cycle Glass Houses Revisited, which is Centrediscs’ all-time best seller and was named one of “30 best Canadian classical recordings ever” by CBC Music. 

New accolades were given to this pianist described as a “piano wizard” (Take Effect) and “the towering Canadian piano virtuoso” (The WholeNote) and praised for her “commanding pianism” (American Record Guide), “intelligent program” (Gramophone), and her “ability to leave a permanent impression on the listener’s soul” (Sonograma Magazine) for her three solo albums on Navona Records. VINTAGE AMERICANA was on a number of 2021’s best-of lists in Canada and abroad. She was also featured on Parisa Sabet’s A Cup of Sins (Redshift Records) and Alice Ping Yee Ho’s solo piano album Blaze and Shadow & Light, an album of three double concertos by Ho and fellow Canadians Larysa Kuzmenko and Christos Hatzis, recorded with violinist Marc Djokic and Sinfonia Toronto conducted by Nurhan Arman on Centrediscs. In the fall of 2023, she performed the Piano Concerto and the Paganini Variations by Polish composer Witold Lutosławski. Her new album GAMES OF THE NIGHT WIND from PARMA/Navona Records features Nocturnes by David Jaeger and works by Tōru Takemitsu, Alexandre Tansman, and Henryk Górecki. 

After making her orchestral debut at 10 in Toronto, Petrowska Quilico studied at New York’s Juilliard School under the legendary Rosina Lhévinne. Winning a concerto prize at age 15 with pianist Murray Perahia, they were called “a promethean talent” by the New York Times for their performances of Mozart and Beethoven. She continued to give solo and chamber recitals at many of the city’s venerated recital halls including Carnegie and Alice Tully Hall. The New York Times called her “an extraordinary talent with phenomenal ability…dazzling virtuosity, playing Olivier Messiaen “to perfection.” Studies followed at the Sorbonne in Paris, and with Karlheinz Stockhausen and György Ligeti in Darmstadt and Berlin. Pierre Boulez coached her in two of his sonatas, which are featured on her 2021 Navona Records release SOUND VISIONARIES. She has performed more than 53 concertos — from Bach and Haydn to present-day composers — with orchestras across Canada, United States, England, Greece, and in Taiwan. Recitals have taken her to England, France, Germany, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.