Leeds International Piano Competition launches the Leeds Piano Festival

Alessio Bax (Photo Lisa-Marie Mazzucco)

The Leeds International Piano Competition (The Leeds) is presenting the Leeds Piano Festival, the first of a planned annual festival, in May 2018. Taking place across 10 days in Leeds and London (14 to 23 May 2018), the performers include past winners and alumni including Alessio Bax (winner of the 2000 Competition), Sunwook Kim (winner of the 2006 Competition) and Lars Vogt (2nd prize in the 1990 Competition), who each perform recitals at both Leeds’ Howard Assembly Room and London’s Wigmore Hall.

The festival is part of the vision of The Leeds’s new artistic leadership, Paul Lewis and Adam Gatehouse, to expand its activities beyond the triennial competition and provide a much-enriched programme of events for both pianists and audiences alike. The first stage in a new partnership between the Foundation and The Leeds sees three Young Scholars from the Lang Lang International Music Foundation (all teenagers from the United States, personally selected and mentored by Lang Lang) will take part in a public masterclass with Alessio Bax and perform in both venues in Leeds and London as .

Other events aim to bring the piano to a wider audience so that for Discover the Piano: Piano Fantasia hundreds of local primary schoolchildren from all over Leeds are invited to Leeds Town Hall to explore and discover the piano in a family performance from creator and pianist Will Pickvance. They will also take part in various piano workshops and hear performances from the Lang Lang Scholars in a fun and accessible celebration of the piano.