all photos of Cristina by Maria Grazia Facciola 2018
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Pianist, educator, and impresaria Cristina Altamura has a multi-hued career shaped by a rich understanding of musical traditions with a distinctly modern flair for communication. She weaves together a crystalline technique, inspired musicality, innovative collaborations, creative programming, a love of community engagement, and a deep knowledge of pedagogy into a lush musical tapestry.
With a prodigious foundation in the Western European repertoire, Altamura’s professional career began at age 19, when she was presented at Carnegie Hall’s 1991 Centennial Year in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the International Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Gisele Ben-Dor. Her European debut followed with the Bucharest Philharmonic, led by Karel Chichon — a success that led to her appointment as principal soloist of the State Philharmonic of Romania, Bacău, from 1999 to 2003. She appears regularly throughout New York City as soloist and with orchestras at major halls including Carnegie’s Stern and Weill Halls, Lincoln Center, and Steinway Hall, at summer festivals including Central Park SummerStage, and on Broadway at the Victory Theatre. Her performances have taken her across Canada, the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, and she has been featured on classical radio in New York (WQXR, WNYC, WWFM) and in South America.
Highlights of her 2025–26 season included a performance of Steve Reich’s Sextet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the Grammy-winning ensemble Sō Percussion, as part of Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival. In July, she performed J.S. Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations, in a two-piano arrangement by Rheinberger, with award-winning Bach specialist Gianluca Luisi at the Regina Musica in Villa Festival at the historic Villa della Regina in Turin, Italy. A repeat performance and recording for the Olympia Arts label will take place at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts on November 1, 2026.
Altamura’s appetite for collaboration regularly carries her beyond the conventions of a typical classical career — from her cross-genre work with Bgirl and choreographer Rokafella to her ongoing collaborations with living composers. Her newest project extends that spirit into literature: Altamura partners with Pulitzer Prize–winning author Yiyun Li, her piano student of the past two years, to launch Li’s trilogy saga, Music Against the Night. In a program interweaving live performance and literary reading, Altamura performs Nocturnes by John Field and other composers at the heart of the book alongside readings by the author herself. They will appear together on October 30th at Princeton University, on January 23rd, 2027 at Steinway and Sons in Princeton and at the American Academy in Rome in March, 2027.
Altamura works in close collaboration with living composers. In 2024, she and her husband, Adam Sliwinski (Sō Percussion), released a multi-album recording on bitKlavier, an innovative instrument developed by Princeton University composer Dan Trueman. Released on the Many Arrows Music label, the album features twelve preludes by Trueman alongside commissions from eight leading young American composers.
In 2017, she founded Legacy Arts International, an organization dedicated to cultural exchange, artistic community-building, and the documentation of significant artistic legacies. Through it, Altamura co-wrote and produced Legacy Arts Chronicles (available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts), an oral history of the influential Italian piano pedagogue Franco Scala, with whom she studied on a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy in 1997–98. She also conceived and led a cultural exchange between the Princeton University Music Department and the Imola Piano Academy in Italy in 2018–19.
Her collaborations with legendary Bgirl and choreographer Rokafella, explored the intersection of counterpoint, hip-hop, breakdance, and the music of J.S. Bach, in performances at the Kennedy Center, the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, and Central Park SummerStage. She has also been presented in recital in Havana, Cuba, at the renowned Basilica de San Francisco — an honor facilitated by Maestro Guido Lopez Gavilan, Principal Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba. In 2018, she premiered a chamber work with written by Gavilan for piano, voice, percussion and violin (performed by the composer’s son Ilmar Gavilan) at the Society of the Americas in New York.
Altamura’s keen interest in musical legacy is rooted in early childhood: her mother, the opera singer and master voice teacher Carmela Bucceri Altamura, studied during opera’s golden era with Maria Callas’s teacher and is founder and director of the Altamura/Caruso International Voice Competition. Raised in this environment of musical exploration, Altamura’s sensibilities are shaped by bel canto tradition and a deep appreciation for music as community. Her artistic education also included ballet studies at the Joffrey Ballet School with former Ballets Russes and New York City Ballet dancers, along with training in line drawing and oil painting.
In 2023, she launched Altamura Legacy Concerts in Princeton, NJ, to continue her family’s legacy through concert programming that fosters vibrant artistic community engagement. She serves as associate director of the historic Italian piano competition Nuova Coppa Pianisti in Osimo, Italy, and has presented lecture-demonstrations at NYU, Westminster Choir College at Rider University, Rutgers, Princeton University, and the Imola Piano Academy Foundation, among others. Altamura received her Bachelor of Music from Mannes College of Music and her Master’s in Piano Performance from Rutgers University. She maintains a vibrant private teaching practice, Princeton Piano Arts Academy, in Princeton, NJ.