Young Steinway Artist, Andrew Vargas, engages audiences with his virtuosic and confident command of the piano. In 2022, Vargas won the Silver Medal in the Advanced Division at the Manhattan International Music Competition and was also the 2022 recipient of the Enlight Prize from the Art of the Piano Festival hosted by Awadagin Pratt. In 2016, he placed first in the PianoTexas International Festival & Academy concerto competition and performed Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra under the baton of internationally-renown concert pianist and conductor, Barry Douglas. For two consecutive years, Vargas was awarded the First Prize in the Bradshaw and Buono International Piano Competition and as a result performed twice in Carnegie Hall.
Also an avid composer, his compositions have been nationally recognized and applauded. In 2020, he premiered his first piano sonata to an enthusiastic audience at the Art of the Piano Festival. In 2016, his piano solo suite, Phantasms was the National First Place Composition Winner for the National Federation of Music Clubs (NFMC) and a final selection in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Competition. A "tour de force" according to judges, Phantasms "demonstrates a great deal of compositional skill, is harmonically courageous, superbly crafted, and is truly a valuable contribution to the piano literature."
Vargas recently completed his master’s in piano performance at Texas Christian University under the guidance of Dr. Tamás Ungár. He is also further refining his mastery of the Taubman Approach for piano under the guidance of Robert Durso, an esteemed pedagogue and cofounder of the Golandsky Institute. His other interests include writing, literature, and patristics.