William Corbett-Jones

William Corbett-Jones was born in Manila, the Philippines in 1929. He began his piano study at the age of 12. His teachers have included Marga Weigert, Alexander Lieberman, Lili Kraus, and Adolph Baller. He made his debut at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1952. The Goldberg Variations was his first recording in 1953. In 1956 he was awarded the Hertz Scholarship from the University of California. Within a year after his return, Corbett-Jones became a full faculty member at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In l967, Corbett-Jones joined the faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz and concurrently became an Associate Professor at San Francisco State University. In 1968, he joined and toured extensively, nationally and internationally, for eight years as a member of the acclaimed Alma Trio. By 1973, he was awarded a doctoral equivalency and tenure as full professor from San Francisco State University, where he actively continues to teach and perform. In 1984, Dr. Corbett-Jones was invited to be guest professor for a semester at the Taiwan National Academy of Arts in Taipei. He made concert tours of Taiwan and the Philippines as recitalist and as soloist with orchestra. Mr. Corbett-Jones has presented several cycles of the complete works of Mozart and Chopin, as well as all the sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert. His vast repertoire includes almost all the standard solo and chamber music literature. As he put it: "My heart is really in the classics."