Pianist Todd Crow has been widely acclaimed for performances in North and South America and Europe. The New York Times has described his playing as “heroic, [showing] endless flair, color and stamina.” The Times of London has called his playing “spine-chilling” and “exhilarating,” and The Wall Street Journal raved that his playing exhibited “stunning control and a wonderful sense of musical architecture.” In recent years he has appeared as soloist with orchestras in the United States, England, Italy, Israel, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere, and in recital or chamber music at the Berlioz/Dutilleux Festival in Manchester, England, Washington’s National Gallery of Art, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, London’s Wigmore Hall, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. He has performed frequently with such groups as the Brentano, Borromeo, Composers, Concord, Shanghai, Miami, Daedalus, Jupiter, Miró, Parker, Dover, Pacifica, and Escher String Quartets, the New York Philharmonic Ensembles, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, and with many eminent soloists including famed jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman. He made his Carnegie Hall debut as soloist with the American Symphony in 1992 and his London orchestral debut at the Barbican Centre with the London Philharmonic in 1986. He has been heard on BBC Radio for many years in both live and recorded performances, and on National Public Radio in the USA, as well as many other American radio stations.
Since 1996, he has been music director and pianist of the Mt. Desert Festival of Chamber Music in Northeast Harbor, Maine, now looking forward to its 61st season. In addition to frequent appearances at the Bard Music Festival, he has been heard at the Casals Festival, Music Mountain, Maverick Concerts, and other festivals. His CDs include sonatas of Haydn and Schubert, Liszt’s transcription for piano solo of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, works of Sergei Taneyev and Dohnányi, the complete works for cello and piano by Mendelssohn (with cellist Mark Shuman), Ernst Toch’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the NDR-Hamburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein, and "Todd Crow: The BBC Recordings," Volume 1 (music of Mendelssohn, Mendelssohn/Liszt, Moscheles, and Schumann) and Volume 2 (piano variations of Brahms and Dvorak), both originally recorded for BBC Radio. Released in 2016, a CD entitled "Of Love of You--A Tribute to Emery W. Harper" features world premiere recordings of new American works for piano, soprano, and bass-baritone by Bolcom, Liebermann, Rands, Stucky, Del Tredici, Wyner, and others. His most recent CD, released in March 2018, is "Frédéric Chopin: The Late Mazurkas" (MSR Classics MS1629), comprising twenty-one mazurkas from the composer's later years. Todd Crow can also be heard on the Albany, ASV, Bridge, First Impression, Golden String, New World, and Toccata Classics labels.
Born in Santa Barbara, California, Todd Crow is an honors graduate of the University of California and the Juilliard School. Among his teachers have been Erno Dániel, Ania Dorfmann, and at the Music Academy of the West, Emanuel Bay. At the age of thirteen he was awarded an indefinitely renewable scholarship for the study of music composition by the Epstein Foundation of Chicago, and as a teenager he won prizes for his works including a competition sponsored by the National Society of Arts and Letters. At age fifteen, he won the Santa Barbara Symphony Young Artists Competition. He is also editor of the volume Bartók Studies (Detroit, 1976). In 1986 he received the University of California’s Distinguished Alumni Award and retired in June 2018 as the George Sherman Dickinson Professor of Music at Vassar College.