Bio

Bio

Short Biography

Concert pianist Anne Rainwater is a dexterous musician known for her vibrant interpretations of works from J.S. Bach to John Zorn. Recognized for her “boldly assertive rhetoric” (San Francisco Examiner) and “bright golden honeycomb for a brain” (Roy Doughty, poet), she engages audiences as a soloist, chamber musician and lecture artist locally and around the country. Anne has performed in venues and festivals throughout the US and Europe, including the Kennedy Center, the Donau Festival in Austria, Kampnagel in Germany, Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, and Bargemusic. She holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and the Manhattan School of Music. Anne curates a monthly musical gathering called the Vernon Salon Series, which she founded in 2016. She has released 2 solo albums – J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (2018) and Anywhere But Here (2020), featuring electronic keyboard works by Jude Traxler. Anne is a 2019 recipient of an InterMusic SF Grant. She is working on her first book, which explores the internal and external ecosystems that contribute to the understanding, practicing, and performing of music.

Highlights of her 2023/2024 season include performances at Santa Clara University and Cal State East Bay in California and Roulette in Brooklyn, New York. She also has new record releases out on Carrier and New Focus Records. When not at the piano or writing, Anne is running long distances, playing tennis, reading, or obsessively watching baseball.

Medium Biography

Concert pianist Anne Rainwater is a dexterous musician known for her vibrant interpretations of works from J.S. Bach to John Zorn. Recognized for her “boldly assertive rhetoric” (San Francisco Examiner) and “bright golden honeycomb for a brain” (Roy Doughty, poet), she appears as a soloist, chamber musician and lecture artist around the country. Anne has performed in venues and festivals throughout the US and Europe, including the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the Donau Festival in Austria, Kampnagel in Germany, and Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio. Diverse appearances include radio interviews on KWMR, KZYX, KALW, and KALX, chamber music performances at Mass MOCA and Bargemusic, and concerto performances at UC San Diego and Mendocino College. She has taken part in two Bach Prelude and Fugue Marathons in San Francisco, where she was praised for her “sympathetic musicianship.” Other notable appearances include Le Poisson Rouge, Georgia’s Tuesday’s Music Live series, Tulane University, Princeton University, and the Paramount Theatre.

Anne has collaborated with and premiered works by composers Scott Wollschleger, Nils Vigeland, Jude Traxler, Ken Thomson, Alex Temple, Stuart Saunders Smith, Steven Lewis, Matthew Hough, Anne Hege, Danny Clay, and many others. She works regularly with percussionist/composer Jude Traxler, pianist Emily Tian, and trombonist William Lang, with whom she has a long-term commissioning project focusing on underrepresented communities in the low brass world. Anne curates a monthly musical gathering called the Vernon Salon Series, which she founded in 2016. She has released 2 solo albums – J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (2018) and Anywhere But Here (2020), featuring solo works by Jude Traxler. She has also recorded for Original Abstractions, Bourbon Thomas Records, Pinna Records, Carrier Records, Subliminal Sounds, and Oberlin Conservatory’s Aural Capacity series.

Anne holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and the Manhattan School of Music. She is working on her first book, which explores the internal and external ecosystems that contribute to the understanding, practicing, and performing of music. When not at the piano or writing, she is running long distances, playing tennis, reading, or obsessively watching baseball. She is a 2019 recipient of an InterMusic SF Grant.

Long Biography

Concert pianist Anne Rainwater began her musical studies on the piano at the age of 3 with jazz multi-instrumentalist Marcia Miget. She later studied the double bass with San Francisco Opera musician Shinji Eshima and piano with Bay Area pedagogues Yuriko Smiley and Joseph Bloom. Anne pursued both piano and double bass at the music preparatory program at the San Domenico School and was a member of the Oakland Youth Orchestra in high school. As a child, she attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and also appeared on the Junior Bach Festival and the Mendocino Music Festival.

While at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, she received multiple scholarship awards, including the Kurzban Merit Scholarship in Piano, awarded to a freshmen “whose talent is of the highest caliber, sufficient to inspire fellow students to greater effort and to raise the general level of instruction in the Conservatory.” In 2004, Anne attended the Brevard Music Center Summer Institute and was a concerto competition winner on MacDowell’s Second Piano Concerto. That same summer, she also participated in the San Francisco Young Pianists’ Competition, where she was awarded the Chiu-Liao Prize.

Anne attended graduate school at the Manhattan School of Music on merit scholarships and lived in International House NYC, where she was an artist-in-residence in her first year and a Performing Artist Fellow in her second year. As a Performing Artist Fellow, she coordinated monthly classical music salons alongside her colleague, saxophonist Christian Torkewitz. This experience inspired her to found her own Salon series in 2016, which she has been curating and running ever since. While at the Manhattan School of Music, she studied under the tutelage of pianists Anthony de Mare and Christopher Oldfather, who affectionately referred to her as a “special kind of extraterrestrial.” Upon graduation, Anne received the Kraeuter Musical Foundation Award for “excellence in chamber music performance.” She was also selected to represent the Manhattan School of Music as part of the Kennedy Center’s Conservatory Project.

Recognized for her “boldly assertive rhetoric” (San Francisco Examiner) and “bright golden honeycomb for a brain” (Roy Doughty, poet), she appears as a soloist, chamber musician and lecture artist around the country. Diverse appearances include radio interviews on KWMR, KZYX, KALW, and KALX, chamber music performances at Mass MOCA and Bargemusic, and concerto performances at UC San Diego and Mendocino College. Anne has taken part in two Bach Prelude and Fugue Marathons in San Francisco, where she was praised for her “sympathetic musicianship.” Other notable appearances include Le Poisson Rouge, Georgia’s Tuesday’s Music Live series, Tulane University, Princeton University, CNMAT, and the Paramount Theatre. She has also held university residencies at the University of Baltimore, Louisiana State University, Wichita State University, San Francisco State, and numerous other colleges and universities.

For over the last 10 years, Anne has given presentations, lecture recitals and masterclasses and universities throughout the country. She has given over 50 premieres of solo and ensemble works, from local Bay Area composers Danny Clay and Matthew Hough to East Coast composers Stuart Saunders Smith, Ken Thomson, Nils Vigeland and Scott Wollscheleger. She has also collaborated with and premiered works by composers Jude Traxler, Alex Temple, Steven Lewis, Evan Ziporyn, Anne Hege, and many others. Anne works regularly with percussionist/composer Jude Traxler, pianist Emily Tian, and trombonist William Lang, with whom she has a long-term commissioning project focusing on underrepresented communities in the low brass world.

In-demand as a soloist and collaborator, Anne has worked with local Bay Area musicians and groups like the San Francisco Contemporary Players, Del Sol Quartet, Bang on a Can All Stars, sfSound, and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. She has also collaborated with the ensembles loadbang, Oracle Hysterical, and the Swedish exotica band Ìxtahuele. Showcasing her musical range, Anne toured with the band CocoRosie and vogue dancer Leiomy Maldonado as part of their musical team at Kampnagel in Hamburg, Germany and the Donau Festival in Krems, Austria, where she arranged pop and opera pieces for the band.

Anne has released 2 solo albums – J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (2018) and Anywhere But Here (2020), featuring solo works by Jude Traxler. Anne has also recorded for Original Abstractions, Bourbon Thomas Records, Pinna Records, Carrier Records, Subliminal Sounds, and Oberlin Conservatory’s Aural Capacity series. She has been honored with residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Blue Mountain Chamber Retreat and Hypatia-in-the-Woods, a unique residency program in Washington State that supports women from all artistic fields. She is a 2019 recipient of an InterMusic SF Grant.

Anne has an active private piano student in both the East Bay and the South Bay. Former students that she has taught and coached have gone on to Yale, Juilliard, University of Michigan, and other colleges and conservatories. She is working on her first book, which explores the internal and external ecosystems that contribute to the understanding, practicing, and performing of music. Anne is the current collaborative pianist for the Peninsula Women’s Chorus, based in Palo Alto, CA, and has been known to fill in with them on other instruments, including cajon, bells, harmonium, and melodica.