Biss made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the
92nd Street Y. In early 2001, he performed with the
New York Philharmonic under the baton of
Kurt Masur. His European career was launched in 2002 when he became the first American to be selected as a
BBC New Generation Artist, winning a
Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award the following year. He made his recital debut at Carnegie Hall in January 2011. and New York Philharmonics; Chicago, and San Francisco Symphonies; and the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. Biss is a frequent guest soloist in Europe, where he has appeared with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Oslo Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Staatskapelle Berlin, Staatskapelle Dresden, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. An enthusiastic performer of chamber music, Biss has appeared with renowned artists such as Uchida, Fleisher,
Richard Goode,
Midori, and
Kim Kashkashian. studios in Washington, D.C. In 2010, Biss was appointed to the piano faculty as Neubauer Family Chair at his alma mater, the
Curtis Institute of Music. As part of his teaching career, Biss became the first classical musician to partner with
Coursera. Together they created ''Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas'', a free video course on several of Beethoven's most famous sonatas. The course has reached more than 150,000 students in more than 185 countries. He will continue to add lectures until he covers all the sonatas. Biss has concentrated on single composers. In 2011, on Beethoven's birthday, he released the eBook ''Beethoven's Shadow'', a 19,000-word meditation on the art of performing Beethoven's piano sonatas. Biss was the first classical musician to be commissioned to write a
Kindle eBook. In January 2012, the record label Onyx released the first of Biss's recordings of
Beethoven's piano sonatas. It was the first of nine discs to be released over as many years. Biss dedicated his 2012–13 season to
Robert Schumann, declaring himself "a fanatic for every note Schumann wrote." The project was titled "Schumann: Under the Influence" and explored Schumann's influences and his legacy. Biss performed a series of concerts internationally with pieces by Schumann's predecessors such as
Mozart, Beethoven, and
Purcell, and composers who have been influenced by his music such as
Leoš Janáček,
Alban Berg and contemporary composers
György Kurtág and
Timo Andres. As part of the project, Biss wrote the Kindle Single eBook
A Pianist Under the Influence. The work explains Biss's lifelong, intense, multi-layered relationship with Schumann's music and was excerpted in
Slate. Biss also released an album of Schumann and Dvořák with Elias String Quartet. Biss is also an advocate for new music. He has commissioned pieces including
Lunaire Variations by
David Ludwig,
Interlude II by
Leon Kirchner,
Wonderer by
Lewis Spratlan, and
Three Pieces for Piano and a concerto by
Bernard Rands, which he premiered with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has also premiered a piano quintet by
William Bolcom. In 2016 Biss launched
Beethoven/5, for which the
Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is commissioning five composers to write new piano concertos, each inspired by one of Beethoven's five piano concertos. Biss premiered "The Blind Banister" by
Timo Andres, which was named a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize for Music, "City Stanzas" by
Sally Beamish,
Il sogno di Stradella by
Salvatore Sciarrino, "Watermark" by
Caroline Shaw, and
Gneixendorfer Musik - eine Winterreise by
Brett Dean. Biss has begun examining, both in concert and academically, the concept of a composer's "late style", focusing on musicians who went in surprising directions at the ends of their lives. He has put together several programs of
Bach,
Beethoven,
Brahms,
Britten,
Elgar,
Gesualdo,
Kurtág,
Mozart,
Schubert, and
Schumann's later works, which he performed with the
Brentano Quartet and
Mark Padmore in the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, and across the United States. He also gave masterclasses at
Carnegie Hall in connection with the idea of late style and published
Coda, a
Kindle single on the topic, in 2017. In 2018, Marlboro Music announced that Biss would assume the role of co-artistic director (with
Mitsuko Uchida) of the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. Biss has a long connection with Marlboro, where he spent 12 summers as both a junior and senior participant. Starting in September 2019, in the lead-up to the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth in December 2020, Biss performed a whole season focused around Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, with more than 50 recitals worldwide. This included the complete sonatas at the Wigmore Hall and Berkeley, multi-concert-series in Washington, Philadelphia and Seattle, and recitals in Rome, Budapest, New York and Sydney. In 2020 Biss performed a
Tiny Desk Concert for
NPR, the United States' National Public Radio. The same year, he released
Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven, as part of
Audible's Words+Music series.
Unquiet was listed as one of the platform's Top Ten Audiobooks the week it was released. Beginning in September 2021, Biss joined the
New England Conservatory of Music as a guest lecturer. Biss writes occasional "guest essays" for
The New York Times. ==Personal life==