Jack Yarbrough is a pianist working in the fields of contemporary and experimental music. Largely devoted to the solo piano recital as a means of temporal and perceptual expansion, Yarbrough has commissioned several large-scale works with the goal of revitalizing piano repertoire in the face of its increasing obsolescence. He has collaborated closely with composers, including Timothy McCormack, Bunita Marcus, Richard Barrett, Marti Epstein, Victoria Cheah, Jack Langdon, John Eagle, Kory Reeder, and Bahar Royaee. Active as a chamber musician as well, he has performed with and alongside ensembles including Ensemble intercontemporain, Yarn/Wire, and Ensemble X. Yarbrough has received recognition from journalists including Alex Ross, Tim Rutherford-Johnson, and Steve Smith. As a member of Alinéa, he has received press coverage as well as a nomination for the Royal Philharmonic Society awards.
Born outside of Birmingham, Alabama, Yarbrough currently resides in Ithaca, New York. He holds a Master of Music in contemporary chamber music performance from Boston Conservatory and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Kansas. Yarbrough is currently completing a Doctor of Musical Arts in performance practice at Cornell University, where he is a Sage Fellow and teaches an active piano studio. Yarbrough’s teachers include Stephen Drury, Xak Bjerken, Michael Kirkendoll, and Jack Winerock. Future projects include a CD release of Timothy McCormack’s mine but for its sublimation as well as a reconstruction of Maryanne Amacher’s Petra with Thomas Feng. His recordings can be heard on Sawyer Editions.
