All Laureates

Nicolas Namoradze
Honens Prize Laureate

Pianist and composer Nicolas Namoradze came to international attention in 2018 upon winning the triennial Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary AB Canada—among the largest prizes in classical music. His recitals around the globe have been met with universal critical praise, and recent album releases have received extraordinary accolades, including: the Choc de Classica, Record of the Month in Limelight, Instrumental Disc of the Month in BBC Music Magazine, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, Editor’s Choice in Presto Classical, and Critics’ Choice in International Piano.

Among the most critically acclaimed musicians of his generation, Namoradze was bestowed the 2020 & 2021 Young Pianist Award by the UK Critics’ Circle, which called him “very much more than a top-flight pianist.” His current activities include recitals at concert halls including New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, and the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan; festival appearances at Tanglewood, Banff, Gstaad, Santa Fe, and more; and performances with orchestras including the London Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and Sinfonieorchester Basel, with conductors such as Iván Fischer, Karina Canellakis, and Ken-David Masur.

After completing his undergraduate in Budapest, Vienna, and Florence, Namoradze moved to New York for his master’s at The Juilliard School and his doctorate at the CUNY Graduate Center. His teachers and mentors have included Emanuel Ax, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Zoltán Kocsis, Matti Raekallio, András Schiff, and Eliso Virsaladze in piano, and John Corigliano in composition. He currently pursues postgraduate studies in neuropsychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College, London, where his research interests include the effects of mental practice and mindfulness on musical performance. Namoradze is the author of the book Ligeti’s Macroharmonies, published by Springer in the Computational Music Science series, and his compositions are published by Muse Press.

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Earl Blackburn
Kanzen Arts
67-26 Exeter Street
Forest Hills NY 11375
917 702 8403
eblackburn@kanzenarts.com

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Please visit www.nicolasnamoradze.com for a list of all upcoming performances.

Luca Buratto
Honens Prize Laureate

“No ordinary virtuoso”—The Telegraph

“The composer [Thomas Adès] was in the audience, saluted Mr. Buratto, and, like the rest of us in Zankel Hall, realized we were experiencing an artist who is both illuminating and unafraid.”—ConcertoNet

Since winning the 2015 Honens International Piano Competition, Italian pianist Luca Buratto has received warm praise. His debut recitals at Wigmore and Carnegie Halls heralded the pianist as “a name to watch” (The Guardian) and “no ordinary virtuoso” (The Telegraph). Described by International Piano Magazine as “masterly,” Buratto’s regarded interpretations of prolific British composer Thomas Adès reveal his versatility as “an artist who is both illuminating and unafraid.”

Burrato’s 2017 / 2018 symphonic season includes the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi (La Scala Milan), the Toronto Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Winnipeg Symphony.

Buratto’s festival appearances and residencies include Progetto Martha Argerich at the Lugano Festival (Switzerland), Busoni and Primavera Beethoveniana Festivals (Italy), Marlboro Music Festival (USA), and the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival (Canada). In 2018, he is an Academy Musician at the 25th Verbier Festival Academy (Switzerland).

Buratto’s discography includes Schumann: Davidsbündlertänze, Humoreske & Blumenstück (Hyperion Records). Alex Baran from Wholenote Toronto said: “Buratto plays with such a conviction that you immediately know he is certain he has revealed Robert Schumann’s true voice. It’s a deep connection that he sustains effortlessly through the entire recording. Hear him live if you can.”

Following graduation from the Milan Conservatory in 2010, Buratto earned a Masters degree from the Bolzano Conservatory. As a Theo Lieven Scholar at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano) under the guidance of William Grant Naborè, he also received a Masters of Advanced Studies.

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For a full updated biography, email laureates@honens.com.

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excluding Francophone Territories and Italy

Honens
Calgary, Canada
tel + 1 403 299 0130
laureates@honens.com

Francophone Territories Worldwide

Boulev’Art Artists Management
Montréal, Canada
tel +1 514 667 0880
info@boulevart.ca | boulevart.ca

Italy

Resia Artists
Milan, Italy
tel +39 026 541 6123
resia@resiartists.it | resiartists.it

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Pavel Kolesnikov
Honens Prize Laureate

“a poet of the keyboard, deeply sensitive and opting for an understated simplicity”—The Guardian

Following Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov’s Wigmore Hall debut in January 2014, The Telegraph gave his recital a rare five-star review and called it “one of the most memorable of such occasions London has witnessed in a while.” Since becoming Prize Laureate of the 2012 Honens International Piano Competition, Kolesnikov has been winning hearts around the world. A live recording of his prize-winning performances was released on the Honens label in March 2013, about which the BBC Music Magazine wrote, “tremendous clarity, unfailing musicality and considerable beauty”. This June, his debut studio recording was released on the Hyperion label to critical acclaim. The Sunday Times described his playing on this all-Tchaikovsky disc as having “affection and élan.”

Significant recital and festival appearances resulting from the Honens Prize include Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Vancouver Recital Society, La Jolla Music Society, Spoleto Festival USA, Canada’s Ottawa ChamberFest and Banff Summer Festival, and the United Kingdom’s Plush Music Festival. He has also performed with Russia’s National Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira, and Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Kolesnikov was named one of BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists for 2014 to 2016, a scheme that provides opportunities to develop live and recorded performances, including broadcasts with the BBC orchestras.

The 2017/2018 season sees Pavel perform with the BBC Symphony and the BBC Philharmoninc Orchestras, and undertake UK and European tours with the Czech National Symphony and Flanders Symphony Orchestras.  He will also give recitals in the Louvre in Paris, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Auditorio Nacional de Musica in Madrid, and the Saitama Arts Theatre in Japan.

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Maestro Arts
London, United Kingdom
tel + 44 20 3637 2789
info@maestroarts.com

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Georgy Tchaidze
Honens Prize Laureate

Georgy Tchaidze possesses “fine sensibility and perfectly honed technique” according to The Telegraph in its review of the Russian pianist’s Wigmore Hall debut. Since becoming Honens Prize Laureate in 2009, Georgy has performed throughout Europe and North America to great acclaim, including debuts at Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, Amsterdam’s Het Concertgebouw, National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Oriental Arts Centre in Shanghai, and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York.  His many festival appearances include Canada’s Toronto Summer Music and Ottawa International Chamber Music, France’s Piano aux Jacobins, Germany’s Kissinger Sommer, and Switzerland’s Verbier festivals. He was invited several times to perform at Norway’s Lofoten Piano Festival, most recently stepping in for Sir Andras Schiff.

Tchaidze’s performance of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra with Pinchas Zukerman was met with praise: “commendable clarity … unusually powerful for a performance of so little ostentation” (Ottawa Citizen). He was also invited to perform for the Governor General of Canada at the special invitation of The Glenn Gould Foundation.

Tchaidze’s reputation as a sensitive collaborative pianist is blossoming. He toured extensively with Canada’s Cecilia String Quartet and performed with the esteemed Borodin Quartet. The Calgary Herald wrote about his performance with the Borodin Quartet: “Tchaidze was magnificent … a performance of rare beauty and musical conviction.”

Tchaidze has three recordings on the Honens label: a live recording with Cecilia String Quartet, an all-Schubert album and a disc of works by Medtner, Mussorgsky, and Prokofiev. In 2015, he added First Prize at the Top of the World International Piano Competition in Tromso, Norway to his accolades.  This season, he performs in recital for the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts at Queen’s University, for Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival, and returns to Wigmore Hall. Tchaidze lives in Berlin.

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Christina Daysog Concert Artists
Alameda, USA
tel + 1 510 769 1640
christinadaysog@aol.com

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Evgeny Starodubtsev
Laureate

The New York Times calls Russian pianist Evgeny Starodubtsev “an accomplished and probing artist” in a glowing review of his first recording on the Honens Label, while The New Yorker includes this disc on its list of top classical recordings of 2011. Starodubtsev was named Laureate of Canada’s Honens International Piano Competition in 2009, and won Lithuania’s Ciurlionis Competition in 2011. After introduction to music by way of accordion at a young age, he studied piano and composition at the Moscow State Conservatory’s Central Music School before entering the Conservatory and continuing piano studies with Natalia Troull. Starodubtsev splits his time between piano performance and composing. His compositions include chamber works for varied instruments, including woodwinds, strings, and harp. This performer-composer combination no doubt accounts for his sense of adventure and intelligent approach to music-making. He has an affinity for music of the 20th century and revels in revealing this repertoire’s wonder and beauty.

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Honens
Calgary, Canada
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Gilles Vonsattel
Laureate

Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel is an artist of uncommon breadth with a repertoire that ranges from J.S. Bach’s Art of the Fugue to the complete works of Xenakis. He is Laureate of the 2009 Honens International Piano Competition, recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and winner of the Naumburg and Geneva Competitions. He made his Alice Tully Hall recital debut in 2002 and has appeared with esteemed orchestras including the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, the San Francisco Symphony, the Warsaw Philharmonic, and l’Orchestre de Chambre de Genève.

In solo and chamber music performances, he has appeared at the Tonhalle Zürich, Wigmore Hall in London and Munich’s Gasteig, and at international festivals including the Gilmore, Caramoor, and la Roque d’Anthéron. Vonsattel is committed to the performance of contemporary works, having given premieres on both sides of the Atlantic, and has worked closely with composers including Ned Rorem, Nico Muhly, and Heinz Holliger. He received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Economics from Columbia University and a master’s degree in Music Performance from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal. Vonsattel is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His recording of works by Debussy, Holliger, Honegger, and Ravel was released on the Honens label in July 2011, and was named one of the year’s best classical albums in Time Out New York.

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Houston Chronicle 15 February 2010

Boston Globe 27 July 2010

North America

Dispeker Artists
Emmy Tu
81-59 East 54 St
New York NY 10022
tel +1 212 421 7676 x16
emmy@dispeker.com
dispeker.com

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Henriette Haage
Lisztstr 11
22763 Hamburg
tel +49 408 540 0504
henriette.haage@ka-haage.de
ka-haage.com

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Minsoo Sohn
Honens Prize Laureate

Pianist Minsoo Sohn has been described by the Boston Globe as an artist, a man who will create a life in music, find listeners, and reward them. Known as a performer with poetic vision and musical intelligence, Sohn continues to garner praise from critics and audiences alike for his masterful virtuosity and for his wide range of repertoire. The latest accolade, published by Gramophone writes of his playing as “highly distinctive and intelligent” and the New York Times called his Honens-label recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations a “beautifully articulated, radiant interpretation” and named it one of the top classical recordings of 2011.

Sohn has toured extensively throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Israel at important venues including Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Argentina’s Teatro Colon, Toronto’s Glenn Gould Studio and St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Jordan Hall and Gardner Museum, Calgary’s Jack Singer Concert Hall, Arrata Opera Centre and Rozsa Centre, Vancouver’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, Banff Centre’s Rolston Recital Hall, Ottawa’s National Arts Centre, Chicago’s Cultural Center, Cleveland’s Severance Hall, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, Spain’s Palacio Festivalle de Cantabria, Israel’s Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Mann Auditorium, Brussel’s Palais des Beaux Art and Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, and Munich’s Gasteig. He has also appeared at the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, New Hampshire’s Monadnock Festival, Spain’s Santander Festival, Israel’s Eilat Festival, Canada’s Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, Colors of Music festival, Tuckamore Festival, Vitoria Chamber Music Festival, Gilmore Rising Stars Series and Celebrity Series of Boston.

He has collaborated with leading conductors such as Gilbert Varga, Keith Lockhart, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jane Glover, Yoav Talmi, Goerges Octors, Jahja Ling, David Hoose, Roy Goodman, Andrew Grams, Daejin Kim and has performed with orchestras including Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, Calgary Philharmonic, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Israel Philharmonic, Jerusalem Camerata, Holland Symfonia, National Orchestra of Belgium, Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, New Hampshire Symphony, Tallahassee Symphony, Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, Bucheon Philharmonic, Symphony SONG, Seoul Arts Center Festival Orchestras among others.

An avid chamber musician, Sohn has performed with Aviv Quartet, Cecilia Quartet, and Ysaÿe Quartet. He also has collaborated with Mark Morris Dance Group alongside Russell Sherman and the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music in the Boston premiere of Mozart Dances.

Sohn’s notable interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations has been broadcast numerous times on CBC — including live broadcast of the Glenn Gould 75th birthday commemoration concert—and across the United States on NPR’s Performance Today. He made guest appearances in a number of other radio stations, including WFMT (Chicago), WGBH Classical Performance (Boston), The New Classical 96.3FM Live from the Concert Lobby (Toronto) and CBC Live on Studio Sparks (Ottawa). His performance with Boston Symphony Salute to Symphony concert was broadcast on CBS and A&E Channels. Sohn was also featured on Canada’s Bravo! channel.

Sohn’s debut recording, Liszt Transcriptions and Etudes, released in the fall of 2008, “brings an elegant intensity while tossing off fearsome technical challenges without breaking stride” wrote the Toronto Star. The subsequent recording, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, was released to great critical acclaim.

In 2006, Sohn became the First Laureate of the Honens International Piano Competition. Prior to that, he was top prize winner of international competitions such as the Busoni, Cleveland, Hilton Head, Rubinstein, and Laureate of Santander and Queen Elizabeth competitions.

Born in South Korea, Sohn began piano studies at age three. He studied at Korean University of Arts with Daejin Kim and Kyung-Sook Lee, then moved to Boston to study with Russell Sherman and Wha Kyung Byun at New England Conservatory where he received his artist diploma in 2004.

He has given master classes at institutions worldwide and has taught at international festivals. He has also served as a juror at the Top of the World international Piano Competition, and will be serving as a juror at the 2018 Honens International Piano Competition. After teaching at Michigan State University for five years, Sohn returned to Korea to join the faculty of Korean National University of Arts in 2015 where he instantly became a much sought after performer as well as an educator. For the commemoration of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary on the year of 2020, Sohn has started to perform and record the complete cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas.

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Hinrich Alpers
Laureate

Hinrich Alpers talks with his fingers, believing “Music is one of the most direct and powerful ways of communicating and listeners depend on honest and inspired performers.” Both the International Telekom Beethoven Competition Bonn and Honens agree, having chosen this honest, inspired pianist as 1st Prize winner and Laureate, respectively. Alpers has performed in recital, as soloist with orchestra, and as collaborator in chamber music and lieder throughout Europe, the United States, and Canada, including performances at the Berlin Philharmonie and Carnegie Hall. He teaches piano at the University of Music in Dresden.

“music making of the highest order. Remember this name: Hinrich Alpers.” — The New York Sun

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Hong Xu
Laureate

Since his debut at London’s Wigmore Hall, presented by Honens as part of the Competition’s comprehensive Artistic & Career Development Program, Hong Xu’s career has been on a steady trajectory forward. He performed at the Beijing Cultural Olympiad in 2008, has collaborated with esteemed conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Hans Graf, and Yannick Nézét-Séguin, and has become a repeat guest soloist with the Hallé Orchestra and recitalist at Wigmore Hall. He also appears regularly with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he has toured China and made his Royal Festival Hall debut in 2012. After a decade living in New York, Xu has returned to China where he resides in Wuhan and is a member of the piano faculty at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music.

“A technically brilliant, insightful musician of seemingly limitless potential.”—The New York Times

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Xiang Zou
Honens Prize Laureate

Xiang Zou bridges the gap between east and west. As founder of the New Asian Ensemble, this Honens Prize Laureate is dedicated to commissioning and playing new music by Chinese composers. He is equally devoted to introducing the music of Western composers to Chinese audiences. Zou gave the Chinese premiere and made the first-ever recording by a Chinese pianist of Olivier Messiaen’s seminal Vingts regards sur l’enfant Jésusmore than 50 years after it was composed. He is a piano faculty member at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and guest professor at the Wuhan Conservatory.

Winston Choi
Laureate

Canadian pianist Winston Choi is Laureate of the 2003 Honens International Piano Competition.  Since his win at Honens, Choi has performed at some of the world’s most important concert venues, including Canada’s National Arts Centre and Glenn Gould Studio, New York’s Merkin Recital Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Paris’ Salle Cortot. Choi is an inquisitive performer whose fresh approach to standard repertoire, and masterful understanding, performance and commitment to works by living composers, make him one of today’s most dynamic young concert artists. He has premiered and commissioned over 100 works by young composers as well as established masters and has collaborated with composers William Bolcom, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough, Bright Sheng and John Zorn.  BBC Music Magazine calls his recording of the complete piano works of Elliott Carter “… sheer élan and pianistic devilment.”  Choi is Assistant Professor and Head of Piano at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts.

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Roberto Plano
Laureate

The New York Times raved that Italian pianist Roberto Plano “showed artistic maturity beyond his years…” at his Alice Tully Hall recital debut.  He has since gone on to perform with conductors including Conlon, Marriner and Zukerman, and performed with chamber groups including the Jupiter and Enso String Quartets. He is a Laureate of the 2003 Honens International Piano Competition, and was winner of the 2001 Cleveland, Finalist of the 2005 Van Cliburn, and Third Prize Winner of the 2006 Dublin International Piano Competitions. Plano’s friendly and outgoing personality has made him a favourite for repeat live and broadcast performances. In addition to his disc of works by Brahms on the Honens label, Plano has recorded two other CDs, for the Sipario Dischi and Azica labels.

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Katherine Chi
Honens Prize Laureate

Calgary-native Katherine Chi became the first woman and the first Canadian to be named Honens Prize Laureate in 2000, a triumph that brought her international attention.  She has become one of Canada’s foremost musical interpreters having performed throughout Europe and North America to great acclaim. “Ms Chi displayed a keen musical intelligence and a powerful arsenal of technique” wrote The New York Times.

Sought after as a concerto soloist of musical and technical distinction, Chi is noted for the breadth of her repertoire. While praised for her interpretations of Mozart, she is also applauded for performances of major romantic and 20th century concerti. “The most sensational but, better, the most unfailingly cogent and compelling Prokofiev’s Third I have heard in years” wrote the Globe and Mail. And when Katherine Chi recreated Stockhausen’s landmark work, Mantra, for two pianos and electronics the Boston Globewrote “when the superb pianists Katherine Chi and Aleksandar Madzar took on the challenge at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday, it was a welcome opportunity: courtside seats at the creation. Chi and Madzar were ensconced among percussion, microphones, and MIDI controllers … the form unfolding like a venerable suite even as it pushes the modernist envelope.”

A year after her debut recital at age nine, Katherine Chi was accepted to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. She continued studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she received her Master’s degree, Graduate, Artist Diploma and Doctorate. She later studied for two years at the International Piano Foundation in Como, Italy, and at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. Her debut recording on the Honens label features works of Beethoven and Rachmaninov.

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Marko Martin
Laureate

Pianist Marko Martin is known for his inspired balance between energy and lyricism, especially in the works of Brahms, Liszt and Schubert.  He is equally admired for his interpretation of music of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Martin began his musical studies at age eight.  He studied at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and went on to work with Joan Havill at the Guildhall School in London where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Music and his Concert Recital Diploma. Martin has toured Europe and North America in recital and with orchestra and continues to perform and teach from his home in Tallinn, Estonia.

Alessandra Ammara
Laureate

Alessandra Ammara is an extraordinarily intriguing interpreter of music of the romantic and impressionist eras.  Her playing is characterized by diffident charm and intense musicality. Ammara has performed throughout North America and Europe to great acclaim.  She made her debut in China in 2001 after a successful concert at Salle Cortot in Paris, and in the same year was semifinalist and an audience favourite at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.  In 2003 she received the Victor Elmaleh Award from the Concert Artists Guild Competition in New York for ‘great artistry’. Her recordings receive consistent acclaim, the most recent praise for her Schumann being the modest “This is probably the best-sounding Album for the Young that anyone has recorded” (Fanfare Magazine). Ammara lives near Florence with her pianist husband Roberto Prosseda and two children.

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Maxim Philippov
Honens Prize Laureate

Moscow-born Maxim Philippov began studying piano at age five and made his public debut at eight.  A prize-winner of several major international piano competitions, including the Leeds, Rachmaninov, Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky competitions, Philippov was First Laureate of the 1996 Honens International Piano Competition.  He was named Silver Medalist at the 11th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2001, where he was also the recipient of a Steven De Groote Memorial Award for best performance of chamber music for his collaboration with the Takács Quartet. Philippov has performed recitals throughout Europe and North America and has collaborated with orchestra around the world.  A former pupil of Vera Gornostaeva, Philippov resides in Moscow, where he serves on the faculty of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

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Albert Tiu
Laureate

Albert Tiu has amassed an impressive list of awards and accomplishments throughout his career.  He is Laureate of the 1996 Honens International Piano Competition and a graduate of The Juilliard School where he was honoured with the William Petschek Award that led to his Alice Tully Hall recital debut. Tiu has performed with orchestras on five continents and is an imaginative recitalist and chamber musician. He is Assistant Professor of Piano Studies at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore.

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Eugene Watanabe
Laureate

Eugene Watanabe was the first artist to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music with degrees in two instruments, piano and violin.  He has displayed his prowess on both instruments by playing concerto performances with each at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, and performing two Bach violin concerti and a keyboard concerto in a single concert with the Utah Symphony. Watanabe is passionate about future generations of musicians and is Director of the Gifted Music School in Salt Lake City, an academy he founded in 2008.

Yi Wu
Honens Prize Laureate

Chinese-Argentinan pianist Yi Wu is First Laureate of the inaugural Honens International Piano Competition (1992).  He began his musical studies at age four and was accepted into the Shanghai Conservatory six years later. Wu immigrated to Argentina as a teenager where he studied with Aldo Antognazzi.  He made his professional debut at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and quickly rose to national prominence. His studies at Argentina’s Beethoven Conservatory and later at USC and SMU in the United States led him to his performance and teaching career in Texas.

Krzysztof Jablonski
Laureate

Krzysztof Jablonski’s love of music began in Wroclaw, Poland, where he was born. At age 12 he performed his first concert with orchestra and by 20 his New York Timesacclaimed “pianistic power of a very high magnitude” had taken him across four continents. In addition to his Honens win, Jablonski was prize-winner at the Dublin IPC, the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition and the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition. He is a Chopin specialist who plays “elegantly and with unshakable interpretive control” (The New York Times). He has devoted much of his musical career to the music of Chopin and, in 2010, performed the Opening Recital of the Chopin Year Celebration at the Senate of the Republic of Poland. Jablonski immigrated to Canada in 1998.  He has a busy international touring schedule and teaches in Calgary. More recently, Jablonski performed with Valery Gergiev and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra for the Clean Baltic Sea Concert fundraiser in Helsinki. This performance was streamed live via Internet and recorded by Finnish Radio and TV. He has also toured Japan extensively, including performances at the Kirishima Festival and with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.  In 2015, he celebrates 30 years of his artistic career.

Krzysztof Jablonski studied with Janina Butor and Andrzej Jasinski and graduated with honours in 1987 from the Academy of Music in Katowice, from which he also earned his Ph.D. in 1996.  He is a Professor of the F. Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and at Calgary’s Mount Royal University Conservatory.

Jablonski has made several live recordings for radio and television and numerous CDs in Germany, Japan and Poland.

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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Laureate

“Jean-Efflam Bavouzet can produce a tone as beguilingly sinuous as the syllables of his own name.” — The New York Times

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is becoming a household name, having performed with the some of the world’s major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France & Hallé. Bavouzet is an exclusive recording artist for the Chandos label and has released many critically acclaimed discs of Ravel, Bartók, Haydn and Debussy, the latter praised by Classical FM Magazine for its “emotional directness” which is “reminiscent of the great Samson François, tempered by a palette of glowing autumnal colours.”

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Sergei Babayan
Laureate

Armenian pianist Sergei Babayan was the first pianist from the former USSR to compete and study in the West after the system’s collapse. Babayan is a Laureate of the Busoni and Queen Elisabeth Competitions. With a vast repertoire — 51 concertos currently under his belt — and passion for new music, Babayan has performed his diverse and inventive programming with many major orchestras including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Nationale de Lille and The Cleveland Orchestra. Babayan is also on faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. The Scotsman may have said it best: “Babayan is no mere pianist. He is a master-musician for whom the piano is his voice, his orchestra.”

Dmitry Nesterov
Laureate

Dmitry Nesterov is a graduate of the Central Music School in Moscow and Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory. After the 1992 Honens Competition he immigrated to Canada and since has performed with many Canadian orchestras and is a regular fixture on the Calgary music scene. He has toured Europe and the United States and often performs with his wife, violinist Olga Kotova as Duo Solista, a name indicating their dedication to being both solo artists and chamber music partners. Nesterov teaches at the Mount Royal University Conservatory in Calgary.

Watch a Honens Story with Dmitry Nesterov