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Denis Linnik began his musical education in his hometown of Maryina Horka, Belarus, when he was 6. Just two years later, he moved to Minsk to study piano and live with other talented young musicians—he says being constantly surrounded by music made it a truly inseparable part of his life. His musical development advanced quickly over the next years, leading him to success in youth competitions and successful stints at the State Gymnasium-College of Arts “I.O. Akhremchik” and the Belarusian State Academy of Music.

American pianist Clayton Stephenson’s love for music is immediately apparent in his joyous charisma onstage, expressive power, and natural ease at the instrument. Hailed for “extraordinary narrative and poetic gifts” and interpretations that are “fresh, incisive and characterfully alive” (Gramophone), he is committed to making an impact on the world through his music-making.

When Arseniy Gusev was 5 years old, an upright piano was brought into his St. Petersburg home, and he immediately started playing and experimenting with it. He wrote his first piece—a romance on a Pushkin poem—shortly thereafter, and his grandmother asked him if he would like to go to music school. He went on to study both composition and piano performance at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Upon graduation in 2018, he moved to the United States, where he attends the Cleveland Institute of Music, under the tutelage of Sergei Babayan (piano) and Keith Fitch (composition).

Andrew Li credits his time in the Harvard University/New England Conservatory of Music joint program with substantially aiding in his development as a musician and a human being. He is currently finishing a bachelor’s degree in human evolutionary biology and a master’s in piano performance, the latter under the guidance of Wha Kyung Byun, with whom he has studied since the age of 12.

Albert Cano Smit has “established himself as an artist to watch” (Montreal Gazette), having won first prizes at the 2019 Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the 2017 Walter W. Naumburg Piano Competition, the latter of which earned him a Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall. He was also awarded the prestigious Arthur Rubinstein Piano Prize from The Juilliard School in 2020, and had strong finishes in the 2017 Montreal and 2016 Hilton Head competitions.

Pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. Gloria was subsequently selected by the The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2009, Gloria launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, a position she held for the next decade.

When she was 6, Elizaveta Kliuchereva—who was born in Moscow into a family of visual artists—was walking in the corridors of her art school and found a very old piano standing in the corner. She says: “From the moment I saw the piano and opened the keyboard, I realized that it is going to be my life, and I would not be able to live without music.”

Federico Gad Crema

Milan native Francesco Granata’s journey with music began when he was 5 and has not stopped since. He graduated from the Milan Conservatory in 2016, with the highest evaluation and special mention. He then had the opportunity to study under two distinguished Cliburn laureates: Benedetto Lupo at the St. Cecilia Academy in Rome, where he obtained the Master Course Diploma, and—now—Roberto Plano at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

Born into a family of pianists in Riga, Latvia, Georgijs Osokins began his studies at the age of 5 with his father, Sergejs Osokins. After 12 years at the Emīls Dārziņš Music School, he studied with Sergei Babayan at The Juilliard School in 2015, then moved to Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf to study with Georg Friedrich Schenck. He finds “consistent development” to be the hallmark of a great musician: “only when an artist fully embraces his responsibility of being the linking element between the creator and the recipient, can he start to generate art himself.”