Biography

Mini-Bio

Born in Tennessee, with degrees from Yale, NEC, and the Royal Conservatory of the Netherlands, pianist Guy Livingston wowed critics and audiences with his successful One Minute Project. Sixty composers each wrote one minute for Livingston, and the project was featured on NPR, in The New York Times, Le Monde, Sports Illustrated, and was praised by the Atlanta Constitution as the ‘party record of the year.’ Livingston is based in Europe and travels widely as a pianist and broadcaster. He has recorded three solo CDs for the Wergo label, and appeared as soloist with the Orchestre Nationale de France and the Chicago Symphony. Major productions include the Nuit de John Cage, the Antheil Centennial Festival, and the William Bolcom in Paris Festival.

Full-Bio

Guy Livingston leads a dual career as pianist and producer. Based in The Hague, he has performed all over the world, notably as soloist with the Chicago Symphony and the Orchestre Nationale de France.

Livingston’s boldness, stamina, and virtuosity at the piano have earned him glowing reviews from the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and National Public Radio. His performances have taken him to Holland, Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Tunisia, India, Georgia, and South Africa. 

His recordings of the modern repertoire include prize-winning premieres of music by John Cage, George Antheil, and over 100 other composers from around the world. Guy Livingston’s best-selling first CD (Don’t Panic) contained 60 one-minute premieres by composers from eighteen countries, and was featured in Le Monde, Gramophone, Diapason, Piano Magazine, and Sunday Weekend Edition. He has recorded for New World, Wergo, and Mode Records. 

Livingston holds degrees with honors from Yale University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Royal Conservatory of the Netherlands. Prizes and awards include the Gaudeamus New Music Competition, the Orléans Twentieth Century Piano Competition and the Sitges-Barcelona Concorso de Piano Segolo XX. 

Livingston has done extensive work with silent film, both contemporary and from the 1920’s. An expert on Dadaism, he has unearthed films and scores dating back to 1919. He was the producer and pianist for One Minute More, sixty experimental film clips by young Dutch video artists.

Strongly committed to bringing music to underserved audiences, he has produced more than 100 concerts and workshops in hospitals in the Paris banlieues.

As a radio producer, he has directed documentaries for Australian Broadcasting, Irish Radio, WFMT Chicago, and France Musique. On Friday nights, he hosts “American Highways”, a podcast featuring new and forgotten American music, on ConcertZender Radio (Utrecht). In 2018, “The Tiger and the Banshee”, commissioned by RTé, and co-produced by Livingston, won the Bronze medal for best music documentary at the New York International Festival Radio Awards. And in 2019, he won the Silver medal for “Victor Herbert, Son of Dublin”.

Livingston appears frequently in the media as an expert on topics as varied as American politics and torpedo guidance systems. His latest television role is in Bombshell, the documentary about Hedy Lamarr’s secret invention (with George Antheil) of spread-spectrum.

He’s currently artist-in-residence at a former Embassy in The Hague, designed by the architect Marcel Breuer. Livingston regularly hosts performance events in this legendary cold-war building.