Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was a Canadian virtuoso jazz pianist and composer. He released over 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy, and received numerous other awards and honours. He is considered one of history's great jazz pianists and played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, simply "O.P." by his friends, and informally in the jazz community as "the King of inside swing".
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a conservatoire and drama school located in the City of London, United Kingdom. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz along with drama and production arts. The school has students from over seventy countries. Widely regarded as one of the leading performing arts institutions in the world, it was ranked first in the Complete University Guide's 2023 Arts, Drama and Music league table; the number one conservatoire in The Guardian's league tables for music and as the sixth university in the world for performing arts in the 2022 QS World University Rankings.
Sir George Albert Shearing, was a British jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. Shearing was the composer of over 300 titles, including the jazz standards "Lullaby of Birdland" and "Conception", and had multiple albums on the Billboard charts during the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s. He died of heart failure in New York City, at the age of 91.
Gwilym Simcock is a Welsh pianist and composer working in both jazz and classical music, often blurring any distinction between the two musical forms.
Dominic Alldis is a jazz pianist, orchestral conductor, and arranger. He is also a business speaker and founder of Music & Management.
Eyran Katsenelenbogen is an Israeli jazz pianist.
Panos Karan is a British classical pianist, conductor and composer of Greek origin. He was born in Crete, and grew up in Athens, where he graduated from the American College of Greece. He studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music as a student of Sulamita Aronovsky. He made his professional debut performance at the Southbank Centre at age 19.
Yuja Wang is a Chinese classical pianist. She was born in Beijing, began studying 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. By the age of 21, she was already an internationally recognized concert pianist, giving recitals around the world. She has a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Wang tours internationally and has received critical praise for her performances. Yuja Wang lives in New York City.
Richard Markham is an English classical pianist. He was born in Grimsby, England, where he studied with Shirley Kemp and attended Wintringham Grammar School. By the age of 16 he had been awarded the LRAM and ARCM Performing Diplomas, become a member of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and won a scholarship to study with Max Pirani at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Whilst still a student he was a prizewinner at the Geneva International Competition, and he made his London debut in 1974 appearing as soloist with the English Chamber Orchestra under Raymond Leppard at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Konstantin Lapshin is a London-based Russian pianist. He is a prize-winner in numerous international competitions.
The London Chamber Players is a London-based classical music ensemble founded by Bulgarian-born pianist Ivan Yanakov in 2011. The orchestra has performed to critical acclaim in Madrid, Cadogan Hall in London, the Guiting Festival in the Cotswolds, and regularly in London.
Ivan Yanakov is a Bulgarian-born pianist and conductor. He has performed on four continents, with a repertoire ranging from the Baroque era to contemporary.
Hasan and Ibrahim Ignatov are Bulgarian twin pianists. Along with Krisia Todorova, they represented Bulgaria in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Malta with the song "Planet of the Children". Like Todorova, Hasan and Ibrahim also gained popularity throughout Bulgaria through their participation in Slavi's Show on bTV. They released their first collection of own compositions at the age of 11.
Vanya Milanova is a Bulgarian-born solo violinist, recording artist and professor of music.
Rostislav Krimer is a classical pianist and conductor. He is also the artistic director of the Yuri Bashmet International Music Festival, and the chief conductor and artistic director of the East-West Chamber Orchestra.
Oliver Poole is a British pianist and composer.
Li Yun, popularly known as Sunny Li, is a Chinese concert pianist. Based in London, Li studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Royal Northern College of Music prior to performing at venues around Europe.
Grigor Palikarov is a Bulgarian conductor, composer, pianist, and music educator.
Utsav Lal is an Indian pianist, educator, composer, and performing musician. Based out of New York, his work on the piano has been deeply influenced by Dhrupad and Indian classical music.
Budapest Concert is a solo piano album by American pianist and composer Keith Jarrett containing music recorded live on July 3, 2016 at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, Budapest during a European tour. It was released by ECM Records on two CDs in October 2020. Jarrett viewed the concert as a sort of homecoming due to his ancestry, which reaches back to Hungary.
