JOHN BELL YOUNG, whose recordings of the music of Friedrich Nietzsche on the Newport Classics and Sony Classical labels earned international critical acclaim, is an authority on Scriabin.

He has performed throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and often in Russia, including appearances at the Glinka Cappella, the Scriabin Museum, and the Riga Philharmonic. Winner of the 1985 Chopin Foundation Council Prize, his master classes and lectures have taken him to Brown University, the Juilliard School, and the Leningrad and Boston Conservatories. In the US, he has performed at such prestigious venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach; and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC.

In 1990 he was awarded a generous grant from the [Rockefeller] Trust for Mutual Understanding to lead the American delegation to the International Scriabin Conference and Festival in Moscow. His monograph Scriabin Defended Against His Devotees: A Critical Evaluation of the Composer and his Music in the Context of Russian History, Religion and Culture has just been published in Russia by Sovietskii Kompozitor in co-operation with the Scriabin Museum. His recording of music by Scriabin, Mahler, Leo Tolstoi, Hugh Downs and Michel Block was released on the Americus Records label in 2000.

Profiles and feature articles about Mr. Young have appeared in Time, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the US News and World Report, Lingua Franca, Hamburger Abendblatt, Bunte (Berlin), Pravda (Moscow), Le Monde de la Musique (Paris), Chaspik (St Petersburg, Russia), Musica Rivista Italiana (Rome) the Christian Science Monitor, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, the American Record Guide, Clavier, the St. Petersburg Times (Florida), Dagens Nyheter, (Stockholm), NPR's Performance Today, WNYC's New Sounds with John Schaefer, ABC-TVs 20/20, and David Dubal's nationally syndicated radio broadcast (WQXR in New York) Reflections from the Keyboard. A widely published writer, he is also a critic and correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times, American Record Guide, Opera News, Clavier, and Classical DisCDigest, and a frequent annotator for Sony Classical.

Mr Young served on the advisory board of the 1995 Scriabin International Competition in Moscow, where a special prize for the best performance of an early Scriabin Sonata was established in his name. In addition, Mr. Young is a frequent adjudicator at international piano competitions, including the European International Piano Competition (Sweden), the Greta Erikson Nordic at Kil (Sweden), the RAMA (Boston), the Young Prince (Russia), the Boston Outstanding Amateur (Boston); the International Russian Music Piano Competition (San Jose); and the Premio Jaen (Spain).

His recording of music by Scriabin, Mahler, Leo Tolstoi, Hugh Downs and Michel Block, entitled "Prisms" was released on the Americus Records label in 2000. In 2002 Americus released Mr Young's critically acclaimed recording of Richard Strauss's rarely performed Enoch Arden, a melodrama for narrator and piano, in which he collaborates with the celebrated British actor, Michael York. His worldwide tour with Michael York in Enoch Arden has included appearances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Kravis Center in Palm Beach, and at the Royal Palace in Stockholm. They have been invited to tour South Africa and Russia with the work in 2007. Mr. Young is also a recording producer (for Americus, Angelok, Newport Classics, and other labels), as well as the founder and Executive Director of Identity Marketing for Concert Artists, Inc., a career consultant to classical musicians. In October 2007, AMADEUS PRESS engaged Mr. Young to write twelve books about great composers for its "Unlocking the Masters" series. In addition to books on Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, and Liszt, he will pen works on Beethoven, Schubert, Bach, Verdi, Puccini, and Brahms, for publication in 2009.