Anna Shelest, Piano

Biography

Anna Shelest is an international award-winning pianist who has thrilled audiences throughout the world. Her engagements in Spring 2010 included a debut at Alice Tully Hall and at Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Born in Ukraine, she began her piano studies at the age of six. She attended the Kharkiv Special Music School for Gifted Children, and at age eleven she performed at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris as the youngest prize winner of the Milosz Magin International Piano Competition.

Ms. Shelest made her orchestral debut at age 12 with the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra, playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1. Since then she has been a soloist with some of the world’s most renowned orchestras such as the Montreal Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, under Maestro Paavo Jarvi, and the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. Other appearances include Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Russian Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Sinfonia and the Jefferson Symphony Orchestra.

Ms. Shelest has performed on some of the world’s greatest stages such as Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. As an international recitalist, she has appeared in Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine, and South Africa. Her chamber music collaborations include performances with the Amernet String Quartet, Cincinnati ARC Ensemble, and musicians from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Her repertoire ranges from the Baroque to today’s composers.  Inspired by her special affinity with Russian piano repertoire, she released her first solo CD of Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-tableaux op. 39 and Moments Musicaux op. 16.  (Classical Records. Moscow, 2007).  She has also collaborated with Cristian Ganicenco, principal trombonist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on the CD  “Beyond Oblivion” featuring music for trombone and piano (2007). Ms. Shelest’s new CD of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as well as works by Tchaikovsky and Glinka was released in February.

Ms. Shelest has won awards in numerous international piano competitions including First Prizes in the Bradshaw-Buono International Piano Competition, New York; the Louisiana International Piano Competition; the Kawai American Recording Contest; and the Jefferson Symphony Young Artists Competition, Denver, Colorado, among others.

She is a graduate of the Juilliard School, having received her Masters in Music in the class of Jerome Lowenthal. Her previous teachers included Sergei Polusmiak at Northern Kentucky University and private studies with Eugene and Elizabeth Pridonoff of  the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.