Media Kit: Out of Tune Piano Blues

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Short Bio

Pianist James Boyk, Midwest-reared, Harvard-educated, is recognized internationally for his concert albums and his teaching and writing. For 30 years, he was Pianist in Residence at California Institute of Technology, and is on the 2011 faculty of the International Keyboard Institute and Festival, in New York. He lives in Los Angeles.

Bio: a "Renaissance Man"

James Boyk was Midwest born and reared (not in Wisconsin!), and public-school educated. His performing temperament showed when he insisted on "playing" at his teacher's spring recital before he knew how. Good-natured applause from the assembled parents satisfied him, and he sat down, content.

He debuted in recital at 12, and with the Toledo Orchestra under Joseph Hawthorne at 16. At Harvard, he earned an AB in mathematics while giving numerous recitals, appearing on radio and TV, and touring as soloist with the orchestra under James Yannatos. For his MFA at California Institute of the Arts, he taught courses of his own devising. His teachers included Leonid Hambro, Aube Tzerko, Gregory Tucker and Henry Harris.

Boyk's early work life ranged from electronic construction to "gofer" to mathematician-programmer jobs in aerospace, education and chemical manufacturing. Even after settling on a career in music, he went through a crisis at 25 and didn't touch the piano for 18 months. (It turned out that this was caused by winning a competition.) He is thus familiar with many kinds of work, and with the career tensions of characters in Out of Tune Piano Blues.

Often called a "Renaissance man," he is a—

—Concert pianist and recording artist, and master teacher of piano. For 30 years, he was Pianist in Residence at California Institute of Technology, where his informal music/talk sessions were attended by all, from freshmen to Nobel Prize-winners; and his recitals were Standing Room Only. In 2011, he will serve on the faculty of "America's most prestigious piano festival," the International Keyboard Institute and Festival, in New York City.

—Recording engineer-producer working "on both sides of the microphone" for his own albums; also recording others like the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Japan's KODO Drummers.

—Scientific researcher in musical sound and audio. As Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering at Caltech, he devised and taught the course, "Projects in Music and Science," which carried credit in Music, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science, and was imitated at the University of Reading (England).

—Writer of a book for musicians, To Hear Ourselves As Others Hear Us. "Two weeks with this book did my playing more good than four years of doctoral-level lessons," says one performer/teacher. He has written for Scientific American, Whole Earth Catalog, Los Angeles Times Magazine, and other publications.