The pianist Julius Drake lives in London and specializes in the field of chamber music, working with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and on disc.

He appears at all the major music centres: in recent seasons concerts have taken him to the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Salzburg, Schubertiade, and Tanglewood Music Festivals; to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre, New York; the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and Philarmonie, Cologne; the Châtelet and Musée de Louvre, Paris; the Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Vienna; and the Wigmore Hall and BBC Proms, London.

Director of the Perth International Chamber Music Festival in Australia from 2000 - 2003, Julius Drake was also musical director of Deborah Warner’s staging of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Vanished, touring to Munich, London, Dublin, Amsterdam and New York. In 2009 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Machynlleth Festival in Wales.

Julius Drake is also a committed teacher and is regularly invited to give master classes, this season in Aldeburgh, Basle, Toronto, Utrecht, and at the Schubert Institute in Baden bei Wien. He is Professor at Graz University for Music and the Performing Arts in Austria, where he has a class for song pianists.

Julius Drake’s passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for the Wigmore Hall, London, the BBC and the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. A series of song recitals – Julius Drake and Friends – in the historic Middle Temple Hall in London, has featured recitals with many outstanding vocal artists including Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Ian Bostridge, Angelika Kirchschlager, Sergei Leiferkus, Felicity Lott, Katarina Karneus, Simon Keenlyside, Christopher Maltman, Mark Padmore, Christoph Pregardien, Amanda Roocroft, and Willard White.

Julius Drake is frequently invited to perform at international chamber music festivals – recently Kuhmo in Finland, Delft in the Netherlands, Oxford in England and West Cork in Ireland - while his instrumental duo with Nicholas Daniel has been described in The Independent newspaper as “one of the most satisfying in British chamber music: vital, thoughtful and confirmed in musical integrity of the highest order.”

Julius Drake’s many recordings include a widely acclaimed series with Gerald Finley for Hyperion, for which the Barber Songs, Schumann Heine Lieder and Britten Songs and Proverbs have won the 2007, 2009 and 2011 Gramophone Awards; award winning recordings with Ian Bostridge for EMI; several recitals for the ‘Wigmore Live’ label, with among others Lorraine Hunt Liebersen, Matthew Polenzani, Joyce Didonato and Alice Coote; and recordings of Tchaikovsky and Mahler with Christianne Stotijn for Onyx and English song with Bejun Mehta for Harmonia Mundi.

Julius Drake is now embarked on a major project to record the complete songs of Franz Liszt for Hyperion: the second disc in the series, with Angelika Kirchschlager, won the BBC Music Magazine Award for 2012.

Highlights in his present schedule include an extensive tour of the USA with Matthew Polenzani; a four part Schumann Series at the Concergebouw in Amsterdam; recordings with Sarah Connolly, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Christoph Pregardien, Ian Bostridge and Gerald Finley; recitals in his own series at the historic Middle Temple Hall, London; and a tour of Japan and Korea with Anne Sophie von Otter and Camilla Tilling.