Pianist Margo Garrett is well known to audiences for her frequent performances in chamber, sonata and vocal recitals. The large roster of internationally-known artists with whom she has long performing relationships include sopranos Kathleen Battle, Barbara Bonney, Elizabeth Futral, Beverly Hoch, Sandra McClain, the late Judith Raskin, Lucy Shelton, Dawn Upshaw, Benita Valente, mezzo Shirley Close, tenors Anthony Dean Griffey and Paul Sperry, violinists Jaime Laredo and Daniel Phillips, violist Paul Neubauer, and cellists Sharon Robinson, Matt Haimowitz, and the late Stephen Kates. Her recordings can be found on Albany, CRI, Deutsche Grammophon (1992 Grammy for Best Vocal Recital), Dorian, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, and Sony Classical. Active for many years in the world of contemporary music, she has performed the premieres of more than 30 works.
Miss Garrett is a dedicated leader among educators of collaborative pianists. After an 8-year absence, she returned in 2000 to The Juilliard School Collaborative Piano Faculty, which she headed from 1985 to 1992. She also was the first holder of the Ethel Alice Hitchcock Chair in Accompanying and Vocal Coaching at the University of Minnesota's School of Music, the first privately endowed collaborative chair in the US. She has also formerly headed collaborative programs at New England Conservatory and Westminster Choir College. At the Tanglewood Music Center she directed the vocal fellowship program for the last 6 of her 19 years of teaching there and oversaw the Center's return, after many years, to opera in the 50th Anniversary performances of Britten's &Peter Grimes&, whose premiere was at Tanglewood. There she also worked closely with a large international roster of composers in preparation for performances of their music in the annual week-long Festival of Contemporary Music. As Co-Director with her teacher and mentor, the late Samuel Sanders, of the Cape and Islands Music Festival, Miss Garrett was awarded the American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) Most Creative Programming Award. From 1999 through 2006, Miss Garrett was the Faculty Chair of The Steans Institute for Young Artist's vocal and chamber music programs at Chicago Symphony's Ravinia Festival, where she commissioned major works by leading American composers including Ned Rorem and Jake Heggie. She is a frequent consultant to universities and conservatories in their development of collaborative piano programs and travels the world adjudicating and teaching classes. Last season Ms. Garrett was in residence at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, presented inaugural classes and recitals at the Vancouver International Song Institute, and gave classes at the Aspen School of Music, Vanderbilt University and the University of Michigan. In May she joined soprano Harolyn Blackwell and tenor Anthony Griffey in a recital, at the invitation of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, for The US Supreme Court at Washington, DC's Library of Congress.
This season Ms. Garrett judged the 15th International Robert Schumann Vocal Competition in Zwickau, Germany and toured Brazil with her trio, Fiati.