Pauline Martin

Pianist Pauline Martin captured the headline Pauline Martin's Dazzling Debut from Kenneth Townsend of The Washington Post, when she “performed rapturously and sensually… a fine recital rewarded by loud, sustained applause”. The Canadian-born pianist has earned international recognition for her solo and chamber music performances and has been featured on national radio broadcasts in Canada, the US, and Europe. She has performed as concerto soloist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the New American Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra London Canada, the Florida West Coast Symphony, among others, including a live 2009 performance of Mozart’s Concerto K. 365 with the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra (Charles Burke, conductor), broadcast to an audience of over a billion viewers by Chinese National Television.

Martin's recordings have earned a first-round Grammy nomination (Hobson’s Choice (St. Clair Trio: works by Sir Malcolm Arnold, Koch International Classics) and a 2000 Chamber Music America-WQXR/FM award (Old Acquaintances St Clair Trio and Friends: works by Franz Waxman, also Koch). Her diversity in standard through contemporary repertoire is represented on the Naxos American Classics’ CD Imaginary Creatures (works by James Hartway) and Postcard from Europe with clarinetist George Stoffan (Kipling House Recordings). Of her world premiere performance of ‘Configurations’ for piano solo, composer Leslie Bassett wrote that she “played [them] as I had always hoped they would be played. In my view... the definitive performance, upon which subsequent performances may be modeled.”

Martin has been active as soloist and chamber musician at a host of regional and international festivals, such the Ann Arbor, Sarasota, Summer Serenades (Rockville, Maryland), Grove (MI), Mackinac Island, Detroit Symphony Tchaikovsky and Meadow Brook Music Festivals, the Aria International Summer Music Academy, Winter Days Festival of Scandinavia, and the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba, as well as several Irving S. Gilmore Foundation Educational programs. 

A dedicated teacher, she celebrates the achievements of numerous former Michigan State, Wayne State and Oakland Universities students who now enjoy thriving careers in music. Her own training, beginning with her mother Lilja Martin, led to studies with Menahem Pressler for bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano performance at Indiana University and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan, as a student of Gary Graffman, Theodore Lettvin, and André Watts.

Martin is a Steinway Artist. She currently balances her performances and artistic direction of Chamber Soloists of Detroit with private instruction at her West Bloomfield, Michigan home, where she resides with her husband Haukur Ásgeirsson.