Pianist Paul Sánchez has performed in North America and Europe and has appeared on radio and television in the U.S. His recordings cover a wide variety of music, and he is also a noted educator. Sánchez was born in 1982 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His parents were music lovers who took him to hear Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, played by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, on the day one of his baby teeth fell out. Sánchez started piano studies at four, took lessons in Sioux Falls from teachers at Augustana College, and went on for undergraduate studies at Texas Christian University, where he studied with Tamás Ungár and graduated summa cum laude. Sánchez earned a Fulbright Fellowship and enrolled for further instruction at the Academia Granados-Marshall in Barcelona with Alicia de Larrocha, receiving a Master of Spanish Music degree. Returning to the U.S., he earned master's and doctoral degrees at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, working with Douglas Humphreys. Sánchez has appeared on CBS television and often on the radio, and he appeared in concert programs of music by Ives and Gershwin on the Music Unwound orchestral programs featuring presenter Joseph Horowitz. He is also a composer who has written several song cycles, and he is a co-founder of the San Francisco International Piano Festival, the Charleston Chamber Music Intensive, and the Dakota Sky Foundation. Sánchez has made eight albums for Innova, Albany, and other labels. In 2021, he backed baritone Will Liverman on Dreams of a New Day, an album of art songs by African American composers; the album reached the number-one spot on Billboard magazine's Traditional Classical Albums chart. As of that year, Sánchez planned further releases featuring new music by composers Shawn Okpebholo and Graham Lynch. He is on the music faculty of the College of Charleston in South Carolina. ~ James Manheim