Pianist Kirill Gerstein is the recipient of the 2010 Gilmore Artist Award, and he won first prize at the 2001 Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv.
Born in 1979 in Voronezh, Russia, Mr. Gerstein studied piano at a special music school for gifted children. He came to the U.S. at age 14 to study jazz piano at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and subsequently attended the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Solomon Mikowsky and earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees by age 20.
Highlights of his 2016–17 North American season include returns to The Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and the Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, New Jersey, San Diego, St. Louis, and Vancouver symphony orchestras. He gives solo recitals in Chicago, Kansas City, Miami, Princeton, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., as well as at Duke University. Summer festival appearances include Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival, Rockport Chamber Music Festival, and Bravo! Vail with The Philadelphia Orchestra. Internationally Mr. Gerstein works with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, and Cologne’s WDR Symphony Orchestra; appears in recital at Vienna’s Musikverein; and performs at the BBC Proms in London and the Aldeburgh Festival.
Mr. Gerstein records for Myrios Classics and his recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin was released in March 2015; it is the first recording using the new critical edition of the Tchaikovsky concerto using the composer’s original second version, which Mr. Gerstein will be performing in these concerts.