Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in Belize to Mayan parents, George Sebastian Lopez started playing the piano at the fairly late age of eleven. Upon returning to the US, he won his first competition at 14 in Texas to perform with orchestra and two years later was awarded a full scholarship to the Hartt School of Music. After graduating with honors, he went to Paris on a Franco-American study grant and won First Prize for the Diplome Superieure. He completed his Master’s Degree cum laude in Amsterdam. Mr. Lopez has been featured as recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and collaborator. Mr. Lopez received critical acclaim for his interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra, and has performed the complete cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos. By invitation, he toured and performed in Paris, London, Cologne, New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and Los Angeles. His chamber music collaborations have included the Emerson String Quartet, the Rainier Quartet, the Incanto Ensemble of Germany and the Aurea Ensemble of Providence. With cellist Emmanuel Feldman he performed the world premiere of Jan Swafford’s “In Time of War” for cello and piano. In addition to the New Hampshire Symphony, George Lopez has appeared with the Granite State Symphony Orchestra, the Midcoast Symphony of Maine, and the Fort Smith Symphony in Arkansas. He has given recitals in Switzerland and Holland, and premiered a piano concerto especially written for him by Romeo Melloni, an Italian composer from Milan, and recorded with the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra in Prague. Mr. Lopez has been an advocate for music education for many years and is a popular lecturer in New England and Amsterdam. He maintains an active studio in N.H. at Phillips Exeter Academy, and currently is the Beckwith Artist-in-Residence at Bowdoin College.