Award-winning pianist Adam Golka ’05 is tackling an ambitious project in 2006, performing all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in the order they were composed.

The 18-year-old started the series of free public concerts with a performance of three sonatas March 19 at Ed Landreth Auditorium.

The American-born Golka, son of Polish musicians who fled the country’s Communist regime in the 1980s, came to TCU at age 15 to study under Van Cliburn International Piano Competition winner Jose Feghali.

Golka has 150 concerto performances to his credit, including the Dallas, San Diego and Fort Worth symphonies, the Shanghai Philharmonic and more. At age 16, he won the China Shanghai International Piano Competition.

Golka delights in talking to the audience during a performance, an element he believes is too often missing from classical performances. Classical musicians, he says, can learn from pop musicians how to “really engage and entertain an audience.”

To learn more about the piano sonatas, go to www.adamgolka.com.