Evan Drachman

As founder and artistic director of the Piatigorsky Foundation, Evan Drachman is a respected authority on the presentation of live classical music for diverse audiences everywhere. Named for Evan Drachman’s grandfather, the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, the foundation was established to make live classical music a part of the fabric of everyday life.

In 1998 Mr. Drachman released his first solo CD with pianist Richard Dowling. In an article titled "A Frog He Went a Courting," the Baltimore Sun wrote of the recording, "Drachman possesses in abundance two qualities for which his grandfather was revered: the ability to make the cello imitate the human singing voice and, even more important, the ability to tell a story."

Since graduating from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1998, Mr. Drachman has appeared regularly as soloist with orchestras, in recitals, and in chamber music performances across the USA. He has also played recitals in India, Great Britain, Sweden, Italy and Canada. He toured the Far East as soloist with the Chinese-American Symphony and gave recitals in Hong Kong and Macau. In 1994 Mr. Drachman performed with the Odessa Philharmonic in Odessa and Kiev. In 1997 he performed with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Mstislav Rostropovich, at the World Cello Congress II in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Born in Boston, Mr. Drachman studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and the New England Conservatory of Music. His principal teachers were Stephen Kates, Laurence Lesser, Luis Garcia-Renart and William Pleeth. In the summers he studied and performed at music festivals in Aspen, Yale at Norfolk, the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada, Prussia Cove in England, and the Cennina Music Festival in Italy. Mr. Drachman has a special love for Alaska and returns frequently to perform for the Sitka Summer Music Festival at the invitation of the festival’s founder, violinist Paul Rosenthal.