Faculty Profiles

Twice GRAMMY®-nominated pianist and composer Paul Sánchez has been praised as a “great artist” (José Feghali; Cecilia Rodrigo), “the ideal interpreter… performing with clear virtuosity” (Fanfare Magazine), for his “clarity, sensitivity” (The New Yorker), and “prodigious technical capacities” (The Rehearsal Studio).

In a Fanfare Magazine review of Sánchez’ CD Magus Insipiens, featuring three of Sánchez’ song cycles, ColinClarke wrote, “This is one of the most beautiful discs in my collection.... Haunting in the extreme,” and WFMT’s Henry Fogel, former president of the League of American Orchestras and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, decribed it as “hauntingly beautiful music... generously filled with melodic inspiration and evocative atmosphere.... works of originality and a distinctive musical personality.” Sánchez was awarded second prize in the American Prize Charles Ives Award in Vocal Chamber Music competition for his work NEFERTARI, for soprano, prepared piano, and sistrum, “recogniz[ing]… the finest composers of chamber music in the U.S.” Sherod Santos, American poet and translator of the Sappho texts in Sánchez’ song cycle The journey, describes Sánchez’ composition as “a magnificent achievement, a work of great innovation and hypnotic effect, impossible to walk away from unmoved.” Sánchez’ The journey is the subject of a chapter in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Song Cycles: Analytical Pathways Toward Performance, alongside chapters on works by Samuel Barber, William Bolcom, George Crumb, Benjamin Britten, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larson, Francis Poulenc, Dmitri Shostakovich, and other composers.

Sánchez is a recording artist with twelve CD releases as of 2025, and his compositions have been featured on the Soundset Recordings and Albany labels. His most recent CD, Songs in Flight (Cedille Records, 2025), was a BBC Music Magazine “Album of the Month” and features music by Shawn Okpebholo, in collaboration with Rhiannon
Giddens, Will Liverman, Reginald Mobley, and Karen Slack. Other recent releases include his GRAMMY®-nominated Dreams of a New Day (Cedille Records) with baritone Will Liverman, which was a BBC Music Magazine “Album of the Month” and reached number 1 on Billboard’s “Traditional Classical Albums” chart; his GRAMMY®-nominated Lord How Come We Here? (Navona Records), with mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and baritone Will Liverman; Seria Ludo - Piano Music by Graham Lynch (Divine Art Records), for which Fanfare Magazine praised Sánchez’ “performance…. grand, noble, reflective, yet shot through with internal light;” and Mysteria Fidei (Innova Records) with his wife, soprano Kayleen Sánchez, as the duo Far Song, performing new music of David M. Gordon and praised by Fanfare Magazine for its “transcendental performances.” His live
recordings of songs by Charles Ives, with William Sharp, are featured in the film “Charles Ives’ America” (Naxos Records), which, according to JoAnn Falletta, “may very well be the most important film ever produced about American music.”

Of his performances of Ives and Gershwin for Joseph Horowitz’ Music Unwound: American Roots, a program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Horowitz stated, “Sanchez’ account of Rhapsody in Blue was original - the most bewitchingly lyric I have ever encountered.”

His focus on new music has resulted in world-premiere performances of several important new works composed for him, including Fabular Arcana, a four-movement piano concerto by David M. Gordon; Consolation New, a work for one pianist playing two pianos, by David M. Gordon; White Book 3 and Absolute Inwardness, solo piano works by Graham Lynch; Mysteria Incarnationis, written for Kayleen and Paul Sánchez by David M. Gordon; and Two Black Churches, written for baritone Will Liverman and Sánchez by Shawn Okpebholo.

Sánchez is an audio engineer and producer, with credits for albums published by Albany Records, Divine Art Records, Imaginary Animals Records (Bright Shiny Things), Innova Records, Navona Records, and Soundset Recordings.

Dr. Sánchez serves as Associate Professor of Piano at Texas State University. He previously served as Director of Piano Studies at the College of Charleston, on faculty at Baylor University and Wheaton College, and is a co-founder of the San Francisco International Piano Festival. He studied with Tamás Ungár; with Maria Teresa
Monteys and Alicia de Larrocha, as a Fulbright fellow; and with Douglas Humpherys at the Eastman School of Music.

Sánchez is a Steinway Artist.