Irving S. Gilmore International Piano Festival is an international music festival focused on piano music taking place in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The festival was created in 1989 to highlight keyboard instruments but was renamed from a "keyboard festival to "piano festival" in 2021. [1] The Gilmore also offers commissions to composers for new works for piano. [2] The festival features performances, community events, and educational opportunities like Gilmore Piano Camp.
Among the artists who have performed at the festival are Herbie Hancock, Diana Krall, Tony Bennett, Ben Folds, John Legend, Pink Martini, Emanuel Ax, and Sergei Babayan.
The Gilmore confers awards including the Gilmore Artist Award, the Gilmore Young Artist Award, and starting in 2022, the Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Awards. [3]
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba" and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.
Dame Mitsuko Uchida, is a Japanese-English classical pianist and conductor. Born in Japan and naturalised in England, she is particularly notable for her interpretations of Mozart and Schubert.
Garrick Olaf Ohlsson is an American classical pianist. In 1970 Ohlsson became the first, and remains the only, competitor from the United States to win the gold medal awarded by the International Chopin Piano Competition, at the VIII competition. He also won first prize at the Busoni Competition in Bolzano, Italy and the Montreal Piano Competition in Canada. He was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ohlsson has also been nominated for three Grammy Awards, winning one in 2008.
Roger Robert Woodward is an Australian classical pianist, composer, conductor, teacher and human rights activist. He is widely regarded as a leading advocate of contemporary music.
Constantine Koukias is a Tasmanian composer and opera director of Greek ancestry based in Amsterdam, where he is known by his Greek name of Konstantin Koukias. He is the co-founder and artistic director of IHOS Music Theatre and Opera, which was established in 1990 in Tasmania's capital city, Hobart.
Kirill Gerstein is a Russian-American concert pianist. He is the sixth recipient of the Gilmore Artist Award. Born in the former Soviet Union, Gerstein is an American citizen based in Berlin. Between 2007-2017, he led piano classes at the Stuttgart Musik Hochschule. In 2018, he took up the post of Professor of Piano at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin in addition to the Kronberg Academy’s Sir András Schiff Performance Programme for Young Artists.
Jonathan Biss is an American pianist, teacher, and writer based in Philadelphia. He is the co-artistic director of the Marlboro Music Festival.
Yitzhak Yedid is an Israeli-Australian composer of contemporary classical music. He is also a pianist and an educator.
Orion Weiss is an American classical pianist.
Yuja Wang is a Chinese pianist. Born in Beijing, she began learning piano there at age six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Charlie Albright is an American pianist and composer. He is an official Steinway Artist, 2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant Recipient, 2010 Gilmore Young Artist (2010) and former Young Concert Artist. He graduated from Harvard College (AB) and the New England Conservatory (MM) as the first classical pianist in the schools' five-year AB/MM Joint Program, was named the Leverett House Artist in Residence for 2011–2012, and was one of the 15 Most Interesting Seniors of the Harvard College Class of 2011. He graduated from the Juilliard School of Music with his post-graduate Artist Diploma (AD) in 2014.
Giorgi Latso is a Georgian-American concert pianist, film composer, arranger, adjudicator, improviser and Doctor of Musical Arts. He is listed on the list of famous alumni from University of Southern California - Thornton School of Music. Latso has won several international piano competitions and awards. He is best known for his interpretations of Chopin and Debussy. He is a founder & CEO of Amadeus International Foundation. His concerts have been broadcast on radio and television in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
The Gilmore Artist Award is awarded every four years to a concert pianist. The award was established in 1989 by The Gilmore of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Randy Lennox is a Canadian music and media executive and is the founder and CEO of LOFT Entertainment. He previously served as president and CEO Universal Music Canada and president of Bell Media, Canada's largest music label and media company respectively.
Anne Victoria Leilehua Lanzilotti, is a Kanaka Maoli composer, multimedia artist, curator, and scholar of contemporary classical music.
Beatrice Rana is an Italian pianist.
Timothy Kramer is an American composer whose music has earned him a Fulbright Scholarship, an National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Currently Professor Emeritus at Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, he served as the Edward Capps Professor of Humanities at Illinois College, and also served on the faculty of Trinity University as Professor of Music, and is a founding member of the Composers Alliance of San Antonio.
Zlata Yuryevna Chochieva, is a Russian pianist of Ossetian origin.
Sophia Agranovich is a Soviet-born American classical concert pianist, recording artist, music educator and artistic director. She holds Bachelor and Master degrees from the Juilliard School, where she taught piano as a teaching fellow. She continued her doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her live performances and discography have won top international awards and critical acclaim. Her albums are charting in top 10 across all musical genres on One World Music Radio and on World Top Radio Airplay Charts. A Steinway Artist, she is concertizing at major venues worldwide, and has been described by Fanfare Magazine as "a bold, daring pianist in the tradition of the Golden Age Romantics" and praised by the American Record Guide for her "magnificent shading and superior musicianship."
Micah McLaurin is an American pianist.