Photo: Micah Gleason
Over the past decade, Spanish pianist and scholar Javier Arrebola has emerged as a distinctive voice in the world of art song and chamber music, known for his rare blend of imagination, artistry, and vision.
He is a frequent guest at Carnegie Hall’s SongStudio, Tanglewood Music Center, The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, SongFest, Bard College, Shanghai Conservatory, and the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, among other institutions. His leadership roles have included Co-Artistic Director and Director of the Piano Program at SongFest, Head of Piano in the Program for Singers at Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, Artistic Associate and Artistic Advisor at Carnegie Hall’s SongStudio, Chair of Collaborative Piano at Boston University, and Visiting Professor at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.
Beyond performance and teaching, Mr. Arrebola’s work extends into creative programming and artistic leadership, encompassing multimedia projects and international events. Among many others, he served as video editor and illustrator for Wigmore Hall’s Schubert in Life & Song, a landmark series by Graham Johnson, and as creator and curator of SongFest’s Songs of Unity & Hope, a global online event bringing together voices from over 60 countries and 40 languages.
Fluent in Spanish and English — and with working knowledge of German, French, Italian, Swedish, and Finnish — Mr. Arrebola weaves language, music, and scholarship into a single expressive fabric. His work reflects a profound commitment to connecting performance, research, and culture, revealing the rich connections between music and other disciplines — history, art, poetry — while inspiring audiences and students worldwide.
He holds both a Doctor of Musical Arts and a Master’s degree in Piano Performance from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, as well as degrees in Piano Performance and Chamber Music from the Madrid Royal Conservatory. His doctoral work encompassed the public performance of all of Schubert’s completed piano sonatas — presented alongside selected songs and chamber works — on both historical fortepianos and modern instruments, and culminated in a written thesis on The Unfinished Piano Sonatas of Franz Schubert.