Internationally renowned pianist Yefim Bronfman is the 2010 recipient of the $50,000 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance. The announcement was made today by the Northwestern University Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music.

The Bienen School of Music’s biennial award was established in 2005 to honor pianists who have achieved the highest levels of national and international recognition. Previous winners are Richard Goode (2006) and Stephen Hough (2008).

In addition to the $50,000 cash award, the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize winner spends two to three non-consecutive weeks in residency at the Bienen School of Music and engages in master classes, chamber music coaching and lectures. The prize winner also performs a public recital on the University’s Evanston campus. Bronfman’s recital will take place March 1, 2011, in Pick-Staiger Concert Hall.

Toni-Marie Montgomery, dean of the Bienen School of Music said, “We are honored that Mr. Bronfman has accepted our invitation as the 2010 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance. The Northwestern family and the Chicago area community look forward with anticipation to his recital and residency activities.”

Winner of a 1997 Grammy Award and the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, Bronfman appears regularly with the world’s great orchestras and festivals. He has been both a “Perspectives” artist at Carnegie Hall in New York and an “Artiste Etoile” at the Lucerne Festival. A devoted chamber musician, he has collaborated with cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Lynn Harrell, violinist Joshua Bell and the Emerson String Quartet.

Bronfman said, “I thank the dean and the Bienen School of Music for the honor of this prize in the company of my very distinguished colleagues.”

Bronfman’s commanding technique and exceptional lyrical gifts have won him consistent critical acclaim and enthusiastic audiences worldwide. During the 2009-10 season, he will perform with the Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Philharmonia Orchestras, the Vienna Philharmonic, and at the Tanglewood and Lucerne Festivals. He also will make a recital tour throughout Japan and perform as a guest artist on a European tour with the New York Philharmonic. His national engagements include both solo and duo recitals at Carnegie Hall.

Bronfman has won widespread praise for his solo, chamber, and orchestral recordings. He received a Grammy award in 1997 for his recording of the three Bartok Piano Concertos with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His most recent releases are Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with conductor Mariss Jansons and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, a recital disc; “Perspectives,” created when he was ‘Perspectives’ artist at Carnegie Hall for the 2007-08 season; and recordings of all the Beethoven piano concerti as well as the Triple Concerto for the Arte Nova/BMG label.

Bronfman was born in the Soviet Union on April 10, 1958, and immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973. In Israel, he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States, he studied at the Juilliard School, Marlboro, and the Curtis Institute with Rudolf Firkusny, Leon Fleisher and Rudolf Serkin.

Prize donor Jean Gimbel Lane is a 1952 graduate of Northwestern University who majored in art history. Mrs. Lane and her husband, Bill, live in the San Francisco Bay area.

Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music also sponsors the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition. A $100,000 biennial award established in 2004, recipients to date are John Adams and Oliver Knussen.