Biography

In the Press

Gerstein / Oramo / City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

The Concerto For Piano and Winds…is full of sharp edges, abrupt juxtapositions and skewed perspectives. It’s perhaps the nearest thing to cubism that Stravinsky produced, and Oramo and pianist Kirill Gerstein made no attempt to disguise it’s aggression or raucousness, making everything seem larger and louder than life, and presenting the central largo as a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of a 19th century concerto slow movement.
The Guardian / Andrew Clements, 4. November 2006


Kirill Gerstein, pianist

Already recognized for his deeply musical interpretations and masterful technique, Kirill Gerstein was the First Prize winner at the 2001 Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv and has concertized in the intervening years in virtually all major international music centres.

Next season 2007/08, he’ll appear with the Philadelphia Orchestra (Dutoit), San Francisco Symphony (Dudamel), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Petrenko), Munich Philharmonic and Filarmonica della Scala (Bychkov), SWR Symphony Orchestra Freiburg (Gielen), Dallas Symphony (Varga), Finnish Radio (Nezet-Seguin), and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Maalki), and return engagements with the Houston and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras (Graf), Gurzenich Orchestra Cologne (Krivine) and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra (Alsop), among many others.

Gerstein will perform solo recitals throughout Europe, including at the famed Liszt Academy in Budapest and at Wigmore Hall in London. He will also continue his chamber music collaborations with Stephen Isserlis as well as the piano trio with Kolja Blacher and Clemens Hagen. The season will close with his Salzburg Festival debut in two projects with András Schiff.

Among his awards, Kirill Gerstein was chosen to receive a 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award and was selected as Carnegie Hall’s “Rising Star” for the season 2005/06.

Furthering his commitment and passion to educational, musical and intellectual exchange he accepted a professorship at the prestigious Stuttgart Musikhochschule in 2007.

Gerstein was born in 1979 in Voronezh, Russia where he attended one of the country’s special music schools for gifted children. He won his first competition - the International Bach Competition in Gorzuw, Poland - at the age of 11 and over the next several years, attended jazz workshops after having taught himself to play jazz by listening to his parents’ extensive record collection. It was while participating at a jazz festival in Poland that a faculty member of the Berklee College of Music in Boston noticed his precocious affinity for playing jazz piano. In 1993, following a subsequent meeting in St. Petersburg with the vibraphonist Gary Burton, Kirill Gerstein attended Berklee’s summer program and the following fall was invited to attend the college on a full scholarship. He accepted the offer and in May 1994 moved to Boston with his mother (his father was eventually allowed to join them) and at the age of 14 became the youngest college student in the school’s history.

During his years at Berklee, he attended the Boston University summer program at Tanglewood in 1995 and 1996. It was following his second summer at Tanglewood that he decided that 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 Masters of Music degrees by the age of 20. Mr.Gerstein continued his studies in Madrid with the famed piano pedagogue Dmitri Bashkirov and in Budapest with Ferenc Rados.