The Brazilian pianist and conductor Ricardo Castro sat on our Jury in 2021 and has in fact been associated with the Concours Géza Anda since he was himself among its prize-winners in Zurich in 1988.His international career took off when he became the first South American to win First Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition. He has performed with orchestras including the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Zurich Tonhalle, the BBC Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and with musicians such as Sir Simon Rattle, Martha Argerich, Leif Segerstam and Kazimierz Kord. His career as a pianist is documented on numerous CD recordings. In 2007, he founded the NEOJIBA programme in Brazil that is dedicated to promoting music among underprivileged children and young people. He is the artistic director of the NEOJIBA Orchestra and has conducted it in innumerable concerts in Brazil, Europe and the USA. Since 2020, he has been a professor and head of the keyboard department at the Haute école de musique in Geneva and also teaches at the Scuola di Musica in Fiesole in Italy, where he offers innovative courses on conducting from the piano – an art form very much in the tradition of Géza Anda himself. Castro is an honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic Society.