piano, composer

Eric Zivian grew up in Toronto, Canada, where he graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music. At age fifteen, he left home to attend the Curtis Institute of Music, where he received a Bachelor of Music degree. He holds graduate degrees from the Juilliard School and the Yale School of Music. He studied piano with Gary Graffman and Peter Serkin and composition with Ned Rorem, Jacob Druckman, and Martin Bresnick. He attended the Tanglewood Music Center both as a performer and as a composer.

He has given solo recitals in Toronto, New York, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. He has played concertos with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Portland Baroque Orchestra.

Since 2000, he has performed extensively on original instruments, playing fortepiano in the Zivian-Tomkins Duo and the Benvenue Fortepiano Trio. A longtime member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, he has performed with the Empyrean Ensemble and Earplay. He is a frequent guest artist on the San Francisco Conservatory's faculty chamber music series.

Eric Zivian's compositions have been performed widely in the United States and in Tokyo, Japan. He was awarded an ASCAP Jacob Druckman Memorial Commission to compose an orchestral work, Three Character Pieces, which was premiered by the Seattle Symphony.