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About Ann Schein, The Washington Post has written, "Thank heaven for Ann Schein…what a relief it is to hear a pianist who, with no fuss, simply reaches right into the heart of whatever she is playing - and creates music so powerful you cannot tear yourself away."
From her first recordings for Kapp Records and her highly acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut as an artist on the Sol Hurok roster, Ann Schein's amazing career has earned her praise in major American and European cities, and she has had performances on every continent and in cities spanning over 50 countries.
She has performed with conductors including George Szell, Seiji Ozawa, James dePreist, David Zinman, Stanislaw Skrowacewski, James Levine, and Sir Colin Davis. She has made appearances with major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony, as well as the Washington National Symphony and the Baltimore Symphony. In England, she has had multiple performances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and the London Symphony. Over her many years of concerts and broadcasts in England, she has regularly appeared as soloist in the Promenade Concerts in Albert Hall, including several Last Nights, when favorite artists are featured.
In 1963, she was invited to perform at the White House during the Kennedy administration, and has toured for several seasons with famed opera star, Jessye Norman.
During the 1980-81 season in New York, Ann Schein extended the legacy of her teachers, Mieczyslaw Munz, Arthur Rubinstein, and Dame Myra Hess, performing 6 concerts of the Chopin repertoire in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, to sold-out houses and outstanding reviews, the first Chopin cycle presented in New York since the 1940's. She has received many distinguished honors for her Chopin performances. During the bicentennial of Chopin's birth in 2010 in a special survey of outstanding Chopin recorded performances entitled, "A Century of Romantic Music", she was cited by the renowned Gregor Benko and Ward Marston who wrote of her, "Ann Schein was trained in her native United States where she studied with both Mieczyslaw Munz and Arthur Rubinstein. Her first recordings, made when she was 18 and 19, established her as one of the premiere Chopin pianists of our time."
She has had a distinguished teaching career, and was a member of the piano faculty at Peabody Conservatory from 1980-2001. Since 1984 she has been an Artist-Faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival and School. In 2008-09, she was a Visiting Piano Faculty member of the Indiana University Music school, and during the 2015-16 season she served as a Visiting Professor at the Eastman School of Music. In 2012, Peabody Conservatory honored her with a Distinguished Alumni Award, and she was invited to join the piano faculty at the Mannes School in 2017.
In 2015, she was invited to give a recital at the National MTNA Convention in Las Vegas, where they presented her with an inscribed gold Tiffany clock and honored her for her more than 50 years as a Steinway artist. A book was written in 2012 by the music critic, author, and musicologist, Cecelia Hopkins Porter entitled "Five Lives in Music: Women Performers, Composers, and Impresarios from the Baroque to the Present," featuring Ann Schein as the sole 20th Century artist.
In 2016, she performed the Third Rachmaninoff Concerto with the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, the most recent of over 100 performances of this revered work worldwide.
Her most recent New York performance was a recital in Weill Hall in October, 2016 on the Key Pianists Series.
Her recordings include an album of all-Schumann for Ivory Classics featuring the Arabeske, the Humoreske and the Davidsbündlertänze. An all-Chopin recording on MSR Classics includes the Preludes, Opus 28, and the Third Sonata, Opus 58. An American album on MSR Classics has the 1945-46 Piano Sonata of Elliott Carter and the Piano Variations of Aaron Copland. Also featured is a solo piano work by the Grammy Award winner and jazz great, John Patitucci, entitled "Lakes".
She and her husband, Earl Carlyss, for 21 years second violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet, have performed countless chamber music concerts both as a Duo and in collaboration with many distinguished colleagues. They are proud parents of two daughters, Linnea and Pauline, and two granddaughters, Olivia and Maggie.
She gives thanks to God for her beloved parents, husband and family, and for her extraordinary teachers, most of all her greatest mentor, Mieczyslaw Munz, who trained her and predicted for her, "a long life in music".