William Hobbs received his Bachelor’s in Piano Performance summa cum laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a Master of Music in Piano Performance, Research and Literature from the Eastman School of Music.
Mr. Hobbs has been heard worldwide in solo and song recitals, chamber music and orchestra appearances in over a dozen countries, including the United States, England, Korea, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Malta and Poland. He has collaborated with many of today’s top performers, including Yo-Yo Ma, James Galway, Renee Fleming, Joyce diDonato, and many others.
Mr. Hobbs works at many major opera houses as pianist and conductor, including the Opéra National de Paris, the Salzburg Festival, San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Seattle Opera, Washington Opera and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.
Mr. Hobbs currently serves on the faculties of the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University and the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, following appointments at the Juilliard School and the City University of New York.
A versatile performer, Mr. Hobbs is equally at home with the core classics of the canon and adventurous in exploring new musics. He can be heard in recordings of music by Lowell Liebermann, Xavier Montsalvage, and Dave Soldier, among others.
His debut CD, “Orbiting Garden: Music of Hatzis and Sorabji,” was released Summer 2025 on Blue Griffin Records. The CD features the complete piano music to date by GreekCanadian composer Christos Hatzis alongside a masterwork by one of the most enigmatic twentieth-century composer-pianists, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji. Mr. Hobbs’s performance was praised by James Harrington for Fanfare: “The pianist is exceptional in some of the most difficult music I have ever heard… the pianistic and interpretive skill of Hobbs comes through in every measure. He has a legato touch that lives up to Debussy’s imagined piano without hammers.”
