Nikolai Demidenko (born July 1, 1955, Aniskino) is a Russian pianist. Demidenko studied at the Moscow Gnessin School with Anna Kantor and at the Moscow Conservatoire under Dmitri Bashkirov. Demidenko was a medallist at the 1976 Montreal International Piano Competition and the 1978 Tchaikovsky International Competition. He taught at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Britain where he has been a resident since 1990.
Lise de la Salle, born in 1988, gave her first concert at the age of nine, at Radio France. After winning many competitions in France, at the age of twelve she was awarded First Prize at the seventh Ettlingen International Competition in Germany. She was appointed to a bursary from the Fondation d'Entreprise Groupe Banque Populaire-Natexis, and won in rapid succession the first prizes of the Young Concert Artists European Auditions held in Paris in October 2003, and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York in January 2004.
Heralded as the “hottest artist on the classical music planet” by the New York Times, 27-year-old Lang Lang has played sold out recitals and concerts in every major city in the world and is the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and the top American orchestras. Testimony to his success, Lang Lang recently appeared in the 2009 Time 100 – Time magazine's annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
Ann Vriend (born Vancouver) is a Canadian singer-songwriter/pianist based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She has sold thousands of albums and played festivals and venues around the world. Ann Vriend released a popular demo in 2000, which garnered immediate radio play on stations across western Canada and earned her a spot at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. A year later she won a songwriting contest which took her to Nashville, and helped fund her debut album, Soul Unravelling (2003), which was well received by critics and sold well for an independent release.
Moon Ate the Dark is the shadowy moniker of Welsh pianist Anna Rose Carter and Canadian producer Christopher Bailey. Between them, the two London-based transplants make a soundtrack to longing, memory and displacement and inject fresh life into the solo piano subgenre.
Omar Sosa is one of the most versatile jazz artists on the scene today: composer, arranger, producer, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. He fuses a wide range of world music and electronic elements with his native Afro-Cuban roots to create a fresh and original urban sound
Matthew Drinkwater was born in Oxford and began playing the piano when he was eight years old, studying with Kevin Suter. At the age of 15 he made his first solo recital appearances in his home town, and the following year playing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.2 with the Burford Orchestra. Matthew’s diverse recital repertoire ranges from Bach to Bartók. He has given recitals across the UK most notably in his home town of Oxford.
Nikki Iles is a British jazz pianist. She was born in Dunstable, Bedfordshire on 16th May 1963. Over the last few years Nikki Iles has progressed steadily into the front rank of British jazz musicians. From a musical family, she first became aware of jazz through her father's record collection, and began playing the harmonica and clarinet at her primary school. At eleven she won a Junior Exhibitioner's Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, studying piano and clarinet, and was soon a member of the Bedfordshire Youth Jazz Orchestra.
Fran Smith (born 25 January 1986) is a singer, songwriter and pianist from Hull, UK. Influenced by strong, female rock performers such as Joan As Police Woman, Martha Wainwright, Stevie Nicks, and Deborah Harry, Fran claims that she has harboured a fierce desire to be a singer for as long as she can remember. Her earliest childhood memories are of avidly watching Top of the Pops and listening to the BBC Radio 1 Top 40 show with her parents as a toddler, and they encouraged her interest in music by arranging for her to have classical piano lessons from the age of six.