Canadian pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko Makes Finals of the Leeds International Piano Competition

Leeds, Sept. 18, 2024 – The Leeds International Piano Competition announced the five pianists who have progressed to the Concerto Finals of the 2024 Competition. These pianists now compete for one of the most prestigious prizes in music.

The five pianists competing in the Concerto Finals are:

Kai-Min Chang (Taiwan)
Junyan Chen (China)
Jaeden Izik-Dzurko (Canada)
Khanh Nhi Luong (Vietnam)
Julian Trevelyan (United Kingdom)

These competitors will perform concertos with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under their Chief Conductor Domingo Hindoyan on 20 and 21 September. For the first time, the Finals of the competition will relocate outside of Leeds due to renovations at the Leeds Town Hall. The host venue for the Finals will be the historic St George’s Hall in Bradford, known for its excellent ‘shoebox’ acoustic, and coincides with Bradford’s status as the ‘UK City of Culture in 2025’.

The winner of the First Prize and Dame Fanny Waterman Gold Medal will be awarded a cash prize of £30,000, concerto engagements with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (including a reprisal of their winning performance at the Glasshouse International Centre for Music on Sunday 22 September), Wigmore Hall debut and recitals across the UK, international tours with Steinway Prize Winner Concerts Network and Global Music Network, and more. Second and Third Prize winners also receive a substantial cash prize, concert engagements and more, and important career-development advice is offered to all competitors as part of the Leeds’ innovative Competitor+ programme. One of the top three prize winners will also receive a debut recording with Warner Classics and worldwide management with Askonas Holt.

Winners will join an illustrious list of past medallists, including Alessio Bax, Federico Colli, Sunwook Kim, Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia and Mitsuko Uchida. Recent Gold Medallists Alim Beisembayev (2021) and Eric Lu (2018) are now well-established international figures of classical music.

Other prizes to be announced at the Finals include the inaugural Alexandra Dariescu Award, which will be awarded to a pianist for an outstanding performance of a work by a woman composer from any round of the Competition. The medici.tv Audience Prize – the only prize decided by the public – will also be announced at the Finals. Online viewers can vote for any pianist from the Second Round to the Finals, and the winner will be given a future broadcast performance on the platform. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society Award will also be awarded to the competitor who best communicates contemporary music during the competition, resulting in the commissioning of a new work for that competitor to be performed in a future Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society series.

The results will be decided by an international, artist-led jury chaired by Dame Imogen Cooper; the other jurors include Adam Gatehouse, Eleanor Alberga, Ingrid Fliter, Mariam Batsashvili, Pavel Kolesnikov, Sa Chen, Till Fellner and Adrian Brendel.

Audiences around the world will be able to experience every single note of the Competition live via The Leeds Media Hub and YouTube channel, presented by Petroc Trelawny and Alexandra Dariescu. Audiences can also view via medici.tv and Amadeus.tv, and the Finals will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 In Concert and BBC Sounds on 21 September, presented by Andrew McGregor and pianist Lucy Parham.

Tickets for the Concerto Finals are available on the Leeds International Piano Competition website.