Kirill Gerstein

Few pianists today move as fluidly between musical worlds as Kirill Gerstein. His artistry ranges freely across Baroque and Classical repertoire, cutting-edge premieres, and jazz, reflecting a musician driven as much by curiosity as by technical mastery. He appears with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, and in recital at halls such as Carnegie Hall, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie and Wigmore Hall. Gerstein’s path to the piano began unconventionally: born in Voronezh, Russia in 1979, he picked up jazz by ear from his parents’ record collection, a passion that led to him becoming the youngest student ever accepted at Berklee College of Music. He later refined his classical technique at the Manhattan School of Music and under the guidance of Dmitri Bashkirov and Ferenc Rados, eventually becoming a US citizen in 2003. Gerstein has built an extensive discography spanning Platoon, myrios classics, Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, ECM and Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings. He has also emerged as a driving force behind new music, premiering and commissioning works from composers including Thomas Adès, Chick Corea, Brad Mehldau, Oliver Knussen, Timo Andres and Francisco Coll. Notably, his premiere recording of Adès’ Piano Concerto with the Boston Symphony earned a 2020 Gramophone Award and three Grammy nominations. More recently, his 2024 album Music in Time of War, pairing Debussy with Komitas, won a 2025 Opus Klassik special award. Gerstein is professor of piano at Berlin’s Hanns Eisler Hochschule and serves on the faculty of Kronberg Academy.