The key to success
For renowned pianist Kirill Gerstein, the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival is ‘the dearest’ of them all.
‘I love chamber music and I never miss an opportunity to play it,” says 30-year-old Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival participant, pianist Kirill Gerstein.
“Through chamber music you find the right keys to a composer’s world and keep learning from your colleagues who don’t play your instrument and don’t care about your instrumental problems.”
Speaking via Skype from Shanghai, where he recently played Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto under Charles Dutoit, Gerstein continues, “For me, this festival is dearer than any other one, and no, I’m not saying that because I’m being interviewed for an Israeli newspaper,” he laughs.
“This was my first festival. It was where I heard and played many beautiful pieces for the first time. There I have befriended many musicians and where I always meet [artistic director] Elena Bashkirova and her father, Dmitry Bashkirov. It is almost a family event, which I have participated in since 2003.”
- Jerusalem Post, September 1, 2010
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20 (PLUS) QUESTIONS WITH: Pianist Kirill Gerstein
One of today’s most intriguing young musicians, Kirill Gerstein was named the sixth recipient of the Gilmore Artist Award in January 2010. This prestigious award – described by the New York Times as “music’s answer to the MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ grants’ – is given every four years to a pianist of exceptional ability and profound musicianship who is deemed capable of sustaining a prominent international career. As the Boston Globe affirms, the Russian-born pianist is “on the fast track to a major career, and he deserves to be.”
Born in 1979 in Voronezh, Russia, Gerstein attended one of the country’s special music schools for gifted children and taught himself to play jazz by listening to his parents’ extensive record collection. He came to the U.S. at 14 to continue his jazz piano studies as the youngest student ever to attend Boston’s Berklee College of Music, before turning his focus to classical music, first at the Manhattan School of Music with Solomon Mikowsky, and then with Dmitri Bashkirov in Madrid and Ferenc Rados in Budapest. Besides the 2010 Gilmore Artist Award, Gerstein was awarded First Prize at the 2001 Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv, received a 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award, and was chosen as Carnegie Hall’s “Rising Star” for the 2005-06 season. Most recently, he was a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant. He became an American citizen in 2003 and is currently a professor of piano at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart.
- PlaybillArts.com, June 29, 2010
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Gerstein’s Winning Ways
‘Let the sky rain potatoes,” declared Shakespeare’s Falstaff, bidding the gods to shower him with fertility and good fortune. These days, he might simply have asked for greenbacks. But if he were a pianist, the request would likely be for a Gilmore Award—a prize worth $300,000 and given to a pianist every four years by a secret jury that assesses candidates without their knowledge.
Such riches don’t normally fall from the sky. But for Kirill Gerstein, age 30, it might seem that way. In January, he was announced as this year’s Gilmore winner. Then in April, Lincoln Center conferred its prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, worth $25,000. For a pianist with less than marquee status, it was a jackpot of huge proportions.
- Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2010
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