William Goldenberg

Distinguished Teaching Professor and Head of Keyboard Studies

William Goldenberg, D.M., has performed over 1000 concerts worldwide as soloist and chamber musician. Concert tours have taken him throughout Europe, Asia, North America and Australia/New Zealand, including such venues as Tanglewood; the Shanghai Concert Hall; Washington's Smithsonian Institution; Chicago's Symphony Center, Art Institute and Dame Myra Hess Series; Paris' Les Arts George V Series; Italy's Settimane Pianistiche Internazionali festival; the Grand Teton Music Festival; and numerous universities such as Cambridge University and the University of Chicago. Concert sponsors have included the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Council England, Consulate General of France, Consulate General of Germany, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, New York State Council on the Arts and Kansas City Symphony, among others.

Frequently invited to guest teach at other institutions such as the Shanghai Conservatory, Indiana University-Bloomington, Budapest's Liszt Academy and the University of Melbourne, he is currently Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair of Piano at Northern Illinois University. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Kappa Lambda, he has won several research grants and published for Clavier. Goldenberg earned the doctorate from Indiana University where he was appointed personal assistant to Menahem Pressler, the master's degree from Juilliard on fellowship with Martin Canin and Rosina Lhevinne and a B.A. in music and mathematics on a National Merit Scholarship at Oberlin. Advanced studies also included chamber music with Felix Galimir, Josef Gingold and Ivan Galamian, as well as contemporary music with Gilbert Kalish and Charles Rosen.

Goldenberg's rare breadth and depth of artistry encompasses performances with many prominent artists, including the Rotterdam Philharmonic Concertmaster and Grammy winner Igor Gruppman, Berlin Philharmonic Solo Clarinetist Karl Leister, Boston Symphony Principal Flutist Doriot Dwyer, Boston Symphony Principal Clarinetist William Hudgins, the Vermeer Quartet and Berlin Deutsche Oper Soprano Amanda Halgrimson. His extensive collaborative experience also includes appearances for Chamber Music Chicago, Maine’s Bay Chamber Concerts, The Lake Placid Chamber Players and California’s Idyllwild Arts Festival. An advocate of contemporary repertoire who has given numerous world premieres, he collaborated with leading composers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Shulamit Ran, MacArthur Fellow Ralph Shapey, Larry Austin, Joyce Mekeel, Hugo Weisgall, Wang Luo Bin and Wang Jian Zhong. Goldenberg has recorded sonatas with Vermeer Quartet violinist Pierre Menard, composer Oscar Haugland's Door County Suite and Petite Suite for My Grandchildren for piano and Songs and Chamber Music for Centaur. The Kansas City Star wrote that he played "with a fiery, rhapsodic commitment that exactly fitted the character of the music" and that he "captured the restraint and delicacy of the music as well as its impetuous abandon." Of a Joyce Mekeel world premiere, the New York Times wrote that "the work was performed splendidly under trying conditions..." and "caught the ear and imagination and held them."