Known for imagination, a graceful, elegant style, and exquisite technique, 24-year-old pianist STEWART GOODYEAR is an accomplished young artist whose career is clearly on the rise.

Some highlights of his upcoming schedule include his debuts with several of the finest symphony orchestras, including the Houston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony with Daniel Barenboim, with Gerard Schwarz, and the Pittsburgh Symphony conducted by Pinchas Zukerman. Goodyear will return for performances with the San Francisco Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony, and he will perform in recital at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
In recent seasons, he toured the United States with the Toronto Symphony led by Jukka-Pekka Saraste and collaborated with the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada led by Pinchas Zukerman and Lawrence Foster. He also appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Seattle Symphony, as well as the Montreal Symphony and the Vancouver Symphony. Following his New York debut with Emmanuel Krivine and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in 1999, Goodyear was the guest soloist on the final Japan Tour of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz. In addition to the Mostly Mozart Festival, Stewart has appeared at festivals such as Caramoor, Santa Fe, and Ravinia.

In addition to his talents as a pianist, Stewart is a composer and frequently performs his own works, including his solo piano work, "Variations on 'Eleanor Rigby'," which premiered at Lincoln Center in New York in August 2000, and his Piano Sonata. Both works have received acclaim from critics and audiences. He has written by commission for the Toronto Youth Symphony for its 25th anniversary, as well as for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

Stewart has been noted for his innovation and is one of the rare classical musicians to always improvise his cadenzas when performing concertos from the Classical period. He has been repeatedly praised for both the inspiring individuality and appreciation of the composer's own style that he clearly conveys in every performance. In fact, in January 2000, after a performance of Mozart's Concerto K. 467 with the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: "The cadenzas were where the real magic was. In them, Goodyear produced surprising harmonies, turning familiar melodies on their head by giving them new context. He led back into the tutti sections in a particularly daring and exhilarating way with fully formed ideas, keeping the listener guessing whether the end was really in sight. All the cadenza material had an improvised feel, and in fact, Goodyear was writing them as we listened."

A native of Toronto, Canada, Stewart Goodyear holds a Master's Degree from the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied with Oxana Yablonskaya. He also studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman, and Claude Frank.

His performances this week mark his Hollywood Bowl debut.