“rewarding.…there was raptness in his playing” - MATTHEW RYE - The Sunday Times
“bursts of glassy brilliance” - BARRY MILLINGTON - The Times
“searching virtuosity…compelling” - PAUL DRIVER - The Sunday Times
“ full and expressive…improvisatory brilliance…post-Debussian colours” - ANNETTE MOREAU - The Independent
Lorenzo Marasso is an impassioned and sympathetic conductor, concert pianist, chamber musician, educator and radio host. Dubbed, by Mexican-American pianist, Ana Cervantes, the “king of repertoire”, Lorenzo’s creative and intrepid programming spans centuries and continents, often revealing lesser known masterpieces and rarely performed arrangements. Lorenzo’s performances have been broadcast in numerous media outlets, including Seattle’s 98.1 Classical King FM and NPR. In 2021 Lorenzo founded the Seattle Chamber Orchestra and is serving now as the ensemble’s music director. In the same year he also started hosting a weekly radio program called Dress Rehearsal on 107.3FM KBFG Seattle.
Equally inspired by contemporary music, Lorenzo has commissioned and performed world premieres of new works by several international composers who have written and dedicated pieces to him. Lorenzo’s on-going collaboration with Los Angeles-based composer, Anne LeBaron, whose pieces for “speaking pianist” offer a new way of interaction between performance and acting, led him to commission the writing of a new piece titled Partizan, as part of her projected series The Well-Read Clavier, using fictional texts by Italian novelist Beppe Fenoglio, which was premiered at the Alba Music Festival in Italy, in 2018. In July 2020 he completed the Invention Project, a commission of new pieces for piano inspired by J.S. Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias.
Lorenzo released his fourth album with independent record label Bauhaus Records in 2019. Titled Abenteuer, the album captures enchanting performances of works by Johann Sebastian Bach and his son Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Alban Berg, Joseph Haydn and Franz Liszt. In 2018, Lorenzo recorded a solo piano arrangement of Joseph Haydn’s full orchestral work The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross and accompany the CD are commissioned artistic sketches by Italian artist and architect Massimo Scolari interpreting the piece. Lorenzo’s other recordings include Works for Two Pianos by Bach and Mozart and Inventions and Sinfonias by J.S. Bach.
From 2012 to 2016 Lorenzo, while in Los Angeles, was Music Director of String Orchestra Project, an ensemble devoted to performing the chamber orchestral repertoire with no boundaries of styles or combination of players. Under Lorenzo’s baton and artistic directorship, the group has presented a regular season of concerts featuring repertoire spanning from J.S. Bach and W.A. Mozart to P. Hindemith and S. Reich. In 2015, SOP was invited to accompany the winners of the Derek Jones Piano Competition in a gala concert, which Lorenzo conducted, at Thayer Hall in Downtown Los Angeles.
Born in Torino, Italy, Lorenzo started playing the piano at the age of five. His main teachers have been Ilonka Deckers and Domenico Canina, under whose tutelage he graduated from the Conservatorio di Milano in 1994. He further studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Prof. Frank Wibaut, where he also performed and collaborated regularly with the instrumental faculty. At the RAM, he also studied conducting with Colin Metters and Denise Ham. Lorenzo currently lives in Seattle, WA, where he enjoys teaching in his own piano studio as well as entertain collaborations with the Music Schools at the University of Washington and Seattle University.