10 Facts About Ursula Oppens

Ursula Oppens was born on February 2,1944 and is an American classical concert pianist and educator.

Ursula Oppens was born on February 2,1944, in New York City into a highly musical family from Jewish parents who had fled Prague in 1938.

Ursula Oppens began early piano studies with her mother Edith Oppens, a noted piano pedagogue, and went on to study with American pianist Leonard Shure.

In 1969 Oppens won the Gold Medal at the Busoni International Piano Competition and the Young Concert Artists competition, plus an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1976.

Ursula Oppens served as a Founding Member of the Speculum Musicae from 1971 to 1982.

From 1994 until 2008 Ursula Oppens was on the summer faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center.

Ursula Oppens held the position of Distinguished Professor of Music at Northwestern University from 1994 to 2008, and in 2008 went on to take up a new post as Distinguished Professor of Music at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

Ursula Oppens is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ursula Oppens is renowned for her commissioning and championship of the music of American composers who were born predominantly in the early decades of the 20th century.

Ursula Oppens's discography includes a recording on Vanguard of Frederic Rzewski's "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" and a version on American Piano Music of Our Time of Elliott Carter's Night Fantasies.