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In Honggi Kim’s childhood home in Wonju, his sister played an electric keyboard; his parents then encouraged him to start learning the instrument after he played the same pieces she did, on his own, by ear. During his middle school years at art school in Seoul, he also studied composition, which he credits with deepening his understanding of music and its logic, so that he could develop his own interpretations.

When he was 3 years old, Moscow native Ilya Shmukler’s mother found him jumping on the bed and beautifully singing Robertino Loreti’s “Jamaica;” she immediately recognized his musical talent and started him in lessons. It was important to his non-musician parents that he be raised as a well-rounded person, so his early years were also spent with school, table tennis, and ballroom dancing. But at 10, he says his life changed after applying for and winning his first music competition and attending the subsequent international summer academy: “There I discovered a true musical life, and I fell in love with it, inspiring me to commit my life to music.”

Seoul native Jinhyung Park began studying piano at the age of 5 and made his recital debut 10 years later. After completing his bachelor’s degree in piano performance at Yonsei University under the tutelage of Ian Yungwook Yoo, he moved to Germany to study with Arie Vardi at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover.

On Jonathan Mak’s third birthday, his sister’s piano teacher decided to give him a trial lesson; he has been actively studying both piano and viola ever since. He made his orchestra debut with the Canadian Sinfonietta just one year later, at the age of 4.

Kate Liu

Marcel Tadokoro was born in Fukuoka, Japan, into a “literary family:” neither his French mother nor Japanese father are musicians. But he studied piano and had the opportunity to give a small public concert when he was 8; he says that was the moment he “immediately understood this would be my life.”

A native of Aichi, Japan, Masaya Kamei—at the age of 20—has achieved major piano accolades in his home country. He was the first to be accepted to the Toho Gakuen College Music Department a year early (in 2019). At the same time, he was the first to win both of Japan’s largest national competitions, the Music Competition of Japan Piano Division and the PTNA Piano Competition Special Grade, in a single year. Other awards include the Masuzawa, Nomura, Iguchi, Kawai, Miyake, and Steinway Prizes; the Argerich Arts Promotion Foundation Award; and the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award.

Sergey Tanin started piano lessons when he was 5 years old, and—though his parents were not musicians and never pushed him to practice—his commitment to the instrument grew quickly. By age 9, he had decided to be a pianist. Growing up in Yakutia in far Eastern Russia, a long way from major cities and the concerts they might offer, he drew inspiration from recordings by great artists, such as Argerich, Pletnev, Michelangeli, and Rubinstein. He was “taken by the power of music.”

Born in Perth, Australia, Shuan Hern Lee started taking piano, vocal, music theory, and composition lessons with his father, Yoon Sen Lee, when he was 2½ years old. His childhood home was filled with music at all hours of the day, as both parents taught piano.

Tianxu An, from Baoding, near Beijing, is a sought-after young artist, both at home in China and around the world. In June 2019, Tianxu drew international attention when he won fourth prize and a special prize for “courage and restraint” in the XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition—the highest award for a Chinese pianist at that contest in 17 years. A month later, he made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Center.