“Shmukler is a volcano” and “the name of Ilya Shmukler must be remembered” is how the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described this pianist after winning four major awards in addition to the first prize at the Concours Géza Anda 2024 in Zurich, Switzerland. When he was 3, his mother found Ilya jumping on his bed, singing Robertino Loreti’s “Jamaica” perfectly. But the parents wanted to raise their boy as a well-rounded person, so his early years were also spent with school, table tennis and ballroom dancing, before focusing on music. Since then, Ilya made solo appearances all over Europe and North America, while collaborating with such artists as Paavo Järvi, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Marin Alsop, Nicholas McGegan, Junichi Hirokami, Anne-Marie McDermott and Victor Julien-Laferrière. Concerto work includes the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, Swiss Orchestra, the Lucerne Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Mariinsky, Sendai Philharmonic and Hiroshima Symphony Orchestras. To have become a finalist and the recipient of an award for the best performance of a Mozart Concerto at the Cliburn Competition is a milestone in his career, as is his New York debut as a winner of the Carnegie Weill Recital Hall Debut Audition in the same year 2022. Originally trained in Moscow, Ilya has been studying in Kansas/USA and in Madrid since 2019.