For far too long, critics and audiences dwelt excessively on Awadagin Pratt’s appearance. Tall, handsome, athletic, sporting dreadlocks, and wearing colorful shirts, rather than tuxedos, in concert, he challenged just about every stereotype of what a classical musician should look like.

The Naumburg Piano Competition was one step toward changing all of that. In 1992, Mr. Pratt became the first African-American to win the competition, one of classical music’s most prestigious international competitions, which boasts victors such as Dawn Upshaw, William Kapell, Robert Mann, Jorge Bolet, and the Eroica Trio.

The competition has special meaning for Mr. Pratt, who is 41, and who will perform at the Naumburg reunion concert, “Naumburg Looks Back,” at Carnegie Hall on September 25.

“Winning the Naumburg was the first step in my career,” he said recently, in a phone conversation from his home in Cincinnati. “Many wonderful things have come as a result of it.” There is quite a roster: five critically acclaimed albums, performances at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the White House, and concerts halls all over the world, as well as with most major American symphony orchestras and at summer festivals in Ravinia, Wolf Trap, Caramoor, and Aspen. And there was an unexpected reward, Mr. Pratt said: he no longer has to field as many questions about his unconventional style, though he still has the answers up his sleeve. An avid tennis player, he wears his hair like his hero, the great French tennis star Yannick Noah, and he chooses shirts over a tuxedo because he believes a tuxedo’s formality can intimidate people who might otherwise like classical music.

Bringing classical music to the public is key for Mr. Pratt. In honor of his father who died in 1996, he created the Pratt Foundation, which promotes classical music in Illinois by awarding scholarships to young students. And in 1997, he became artistic director of the Next Generation Festival, a series of free chamber music concerts and apprenticeship programs, which takes place every June in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

“There’s something about Awadagin that makes it easy for people to gain an interest in the music,” the festival’s founder, Ellen Hughes, said. “It’s how he communicates. He makes the music embraceable.”

That appeal has created anticipation for Mr. Pratt’s appearance in New York this week. “I’ve had so many calls with people saying ‘I can’t wait to hear Awadagin again,'” the executive director of the Naumburg Foundation, Lucy Mann, said. “Audiences don’t expect to hear he and Joey together,” Ms. Mann said, referring to the competition’s 1960 prizewinner, violinist Joseph Silverstein, who will be featured in the concert alongside Mr. Pratt.

Though New Yorkers may find Mr. Silverstein and Mr. Pratt’s pairing unusual, the two often share the same stage out of town. “I met Awadagin for the first time shortly after his Naumburg prize,” Mr. Silverstein said. “He appeared as soloist with the Utah symphony, and I found that he had a sense of sound which many young pianists seem to lack. I believe that his background as a violinist makes him much more of a colorist than most keyboard artists.” Mr. Silverstein invited Mr. Pratt to play with him at various orchestra appearances. “When this Naumburg concert was proposed, I was happy to have an occasion to play with him once again. I think that the time gap between our prizes makes our performance together all the more exciting.”

Last fall, Mr. Pratt moved from his longtime home in Albuquerque to Cincinnati, where he joined the faculty at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as assistant professor of piano and artist-in-residence. He received an especially warm response to his first concert there.

“Awadagin Pratt brought a kind of fierce passion to his blockbuster program” the music critic at the Cincinnati Enquirer, Janelle Gelfand, wrote. “His Beethoven sonatas — the E Major, Op. 14, No. 1 and A-flat Major, Op. 110 — were probing and dramatically explosive, yet delivered with such clarity that the listener discovered elements one never knew existed. In particular, Beethoven’s great Op. 110, with its thundering climaxes and rapt soft passages, was a revelation of color and emotion.”

Given such a reception, it was no surprise that the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s artistic director, the conductor Paavo Järvi, asked Mr. Pratt to perform at the orchestra’s opening concert last week. “Awadagin is thoughtful and intelligent and I like his delicate approach to performing,” Mr. Jarvi said.

Such thoughtfulness has served Mr. Pratt offstage as well, where his decision to teach came naturally. Both of his parents were professors at Illinois State University, where his father, who was from Sierra Leone, and his mother, a Texan, taught physics and social work, respectively. “I have always loved and valued teaching,” he said, “and I always thought about the ways I was being taught. I think I have valuable experience to share, and an interesting and diversified point of view.”

He certainly received some of the most comprehensive musical education around. From the beginning of his musical education, he studied violin and conducting as well as piano. His multiple musical interests lead him to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, which allows students to major in three musical disciplines.

“It was fearless for someone that age, remarkable,” a professor, Robert Weirich, said of Mr. Pratt’s entrance piano audition. “You can’t tell most piano students apart at that age. Awadagin was already Awadagin. In his years with me, he was always experimenting — things went crazy sometimes, but they were never dull. When he plays, he’s one of these very rare people who make you hear a piece as if for the first time.”

Mr. Pratt became the conservatory’s first student to receive performer’s certificates in piano and violin and a graduate performance diploma in conducting. His goal in coming years is to do more conducting, but his interests range much further than music. A fan of chess, he excels at basketball and tennis, cooks gourmet food, smokes cigars, and spends time searching for, and drinking, the best wines. And he likes jazz, in particular Keith Jarrett, Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Wynton Marsalis, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. “I don’t play jazz though,” he said, “I have too much respect for the music to dabble in it.”

Dabbling clearly is not Mr. Pratt’s style. His total immersion in the music during his performances sweeps listeners away. “The best sign of the audience’s engagement,” he said, “is the absolute silence in the hall while I’m playing. You can hear the music, the music traveling into the listeners’ ears and their consumption of it. That’s the sign of complete engagement and the best response.”