Polish-born pianist Igor Lipinski made his orchestra debut with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra on NPR’s Performance Today playing Paderewski’s Piano Concerto under the baton of JoAnn Falletta. As an orchestra soloist, he has appeared with Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra, Butler County Symphony Orchestra, Woodstock Mozart Festival Orchestra, Lakes Area Music Festival Orchestra, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, Norman Philharmonic, and Paderewski Symphony Orchestra at Chicago’s Symphony Center.
He maintains an active concert career in the U.S. including a live broadcast recital at Chicago’s premiere classical music station 98.7 WFMT and “33 Variations,” an award-winning theater play based on Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Highlights of recent concert seasons include recitals at the San Francisco International Piano Festival, College of Charleston International Piano Series in Charleston, South Carolina, WNYC’s Greene Space in New York City, Teatro Jordão at the European Piano Teachers Conference in Guimarães, Portugal, and Mozarthaus Museum’s Bösendorfer Hall in Vienna, Austria.
At age 12, Lipinski won the Grand Prix and the First Prize at the Paderewski Competition for Young Pianists in Tuchów, Poland. At 17, he played the role of a pianist in Kazimierz Braun’s theatre play "Paderewski's Children" at the University at Buffalo. A year later, he graduated from the Paderewski Music High School in Tarnów, Poland where he studied piano with Jaroslaw Iwaneczko.
Lipinski earned his Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and Musical Arts and Master of Music in Piano Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester where he studied piano under the tutelage of Douglas Humpherys. As a teaching assistant of Vincent Lenti and Tony Caramia, he received Eastman’s Teaching Assistant Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Lipinski continued his graduate studies at Northwestern University Bienen School of Music earning his Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance under the tutelage of Alan Chow. Upon graduation from Northwestern, Lipinski joined the piano faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville as a Lecturer of Piano where he received the KMTA Teacher of the Year award. In 2017, Lipinski joined the piano faculty at the University of Oklahoma as an Assistant Professor of Piano and in 2023, he was promoted with tenure to an Associate Professor of Piano.
Lipinski’s students have won multiple awards including the University of Oklahoma Concerto Competition and the Oklahoma MTNA Young Artist Piano Competition.
Lipinski has been an adjudicator at national competitions including Dallas International Piano Competition, Texas Music Teachers Association State Conference in Houston, and the Young Artist Piano Competition Finals of the 2020 MTNA National Conference in Chicago where he was also selected to present a conference session entitled “Reimagining The Piano Recital: Creative Ideas To Engage Your Audience.” He lectures internationally, most frequently at the European Piano Teachers Association (EPTA) International Conferences in Portugal (2022), Italy (2023), and Switzerland (2024).
Lipinski’s research interests focus on the history of recital programming featured in his DMA dissertation “From Liszt to Victor Borge: A Legacy of Unique Piano Performances.” Recognized for his own creative programming, Lipinski unified two of his lifelong passions, classical music and magic, in a unique recital program Piano Illusions. Originally developed for his honors senior thesis at Eastman, Lipinski collaborated on the program with Teller of Las Vegas duo Penn & Teller and won the WQXR Classical Comedy Contest at Caroline’s on Broadway. In light of his success in New York, Lipinski presented “Piano Illusions” at renowned concert series and festivals including Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation in Salt Lake City and Musica del Cuore Concert Series in Hong Kong. Most recently, his collaboration with Paul Christman, a faculty colleague in the OU School of Musical Theatre, have won him the Norman Research Council Faculty Investment Program grant to present “Piano Illusions” at the largest performance art festival in the world, the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Passionate recording artist, Lipinski has released several albums on Spotify and Apple Music under his own concept record label Vanishing Records including Alchemy, Ravel, Masterpieces, Liszt, and his latest, in tears, an album dedicated to the piano music of Czech composer Leoš Janáček.
- DMA - Northwestern University
- MM - Eastman School of Music
- BM - Eastman School of Music
