Katie Mahan

American pianist Katie Mahan is notable in that she lives in Salzburg, Austria, and has spent much of her career in the German-speaking world. She plays a wide range of repertory, specializing in the music of Gershwin and Debussy. Mahan was born in Golden, Colorado, in Denver's Front Range suburbs, in the early 1980s. Her father, Harv, was a solar physicist, her mother, Bobette, a piano teacher who gave young Katie her first lessons. Urged to take up the piano, she resisted but gave in at age four after hearing a concert by Katia & Marielle Labèque. Mahan gave her first recital at six and played Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F at the Breckenridge Music Festival in 1999. She attended the University of Colorado College of Music, studying with Howard Waltz, among others, and graduating with highest honors. Mahan went on to study with pianist Pascal Rogé, emphasizing French Impressionist repertory. She rounded out her education in master classes with Lang Lang, Simon Trpceski, and Michel Béroff. Mahan has performed in such major venues as the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, and the Smetana Hall in Prague. Her concerto credits include appearances with the Wiener Residenz Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonia, and the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra. Moving to Salzburg because, as she told an interviewer, "I always dreamed someday to live in this beautiful city where Mozart lived and breathed!," Mahan has divided her career between European and American appearances. In 2019, Mahan was signed to the Steinway & Sons label and released the album, Classical Gershwin. She followed it up a year later with Beethoven: Appassionata. Mahan is the founder and leader of the Katie Mahan Foundation, which, under the slogan "Music for a Bright Tomorrow," presents concerts and related events to promote classical music and to inspire giving through music for educational, medical, environmental, and other humanitarian causes in the United States and around the world. ~ James Manheim