Heather O’Donnell

Heather O’Donnell

Heather O’Donnell plays a wide range of music, from Bach’s Goldberg Variations through major works of the early 20th-century, e.g. Ives’s Concord Sonata, Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit), continuing on to a passionate involvement with contemporary music. She gave over 30 world-premieres of solo piano works (including pieces by Berio, Walter Zimmermann and Tenney) and is the dedicatee of works by several composers (including Finnissy, Rzewski, and Schneller). She was featured on Deutschland Radio, Radio France, and Deutsche Welle Television and gave lectures and masterclasses at Columbia University (New York), New England Conservatory (Boston), Universität der Künste (Berlin) and Rhodes University (South Africa). O’Donnell was the first prize winner and the recipient of the Gaudeamus Foundation Prize in the Fifth Krzysztof Penderecki International Competition in Kraków, Poland. She currently lives in Berlin.