Recognized for his masterful technique and probing interpretations, Russian pianist KIRILL GERSTEIN is quickly proving to be one of today’s most promising and intriguing young artists.

Born in 1979 in Voronezh, Russia where he attended one of the country’s special music schools for gifted children, Kirill Gerstein came to the U.S. at the age of 14 as the youngest student ever to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston to continue his studies in jazz piano. During his years at Berklee he continued to practice the classical piano repertoire and also attended the Boston University summer program at Tanglewood in 1995 and 1996. It was following his second summer at Tanglewood that he decided classical music would be his main focus. He moved to New York City to attend the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Solomon Mikowsky and earned both his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees by the age of 20. Gerstein continued his studies in Madrid with the famed piano pedagogue Dmitri Bashkirov and currently coaches with Ferenc Rados in Budapest.

Gerstein’s recent and upcoming engagements in North America include appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa; the San Francisco, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Vancouver, Oregon, and Utah symphonies; the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony; the Mann Music Center and Saratoga Festival with the Philadelphia Orchestra; the Blossom Festival with the Cleveland Orchestra; Chicago’s Grant Park Festival; chamber music performances at Zankel Hall at Carnegie and the 92nd St. Y; and recitals in Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit, Vancouver, Kansas City, Portland, OR, and the Kennedy Center.

Equally active internationally, Kirill Gerstein has worked with many of Europe’s most prominent orchestras including the Munich, Rotterdam, Royal Liverpool, and London philharmonics, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Tonhalle, Finnish, and Swedish Radio orchestras, and the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin. He also appears in recital in Paris, Prague, and Hamburg, London’s Wigmore Hall, and the Liszt Academy in Budapest, and makes his debut at the Salzburg Festival performing with András Schiff.

Gerstein received the First Prize at the 2001 Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv and was a recipient of a 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award. He was also selected as Carnegie Hall’s “Rising Star” for the 2005/06 season. He became an American citizen in 2003 and is currently professor of piano at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart.