Pianist and composer Nicolas Namoradze, whose performances have been hailed as “sparkling… sensitive and coloristic” (The New York Times) and “simply gorgeous” (Wall Street Journal), came to international attention in 2018 upon winning the triennial Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, Canada—among the largest prizes in classical music. His often sold-out recitals around the globe have been met with universal critical praise, and recent album releases have received extraordinary accolades, including the Choc de Classica, Record of the Month in Limelight, Instrumental Disc of the Month in BBC Music Magazine, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, Editor’s Choice in Presto Classical and Critics’ Choice in International Piano, as well as a first-place debut in the UK charts for classical instrumental albums.

Among the most critically acclaimed musicians of his generation, Namoradze was bestowed the 2020 & 2021 Young Pianist Award by the UK Critics’ Circle, which called him “very much more than a top-flight pianist.” Recent critical highlights include rare five-star reviews in The Telegraph and The Guardian, which called his performance at Royal Festival Hall with Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra “ideally laconic and debonair, weighty yet exquisite, and exactingly precise in tone and touch.” A 2022 cover feature in International Piano declared Namoradze’s Wigmore Hall debut “astonishing,” concluding that, “with so many talents and interests it is impossible to predict what this young man will go on to do: all we can be sure of is that it will be both original and unexpected.”

His current activities include residencies at the Konzerthaus Dortmund, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Summer Music and the Florida Grand Piano Series; recital appearances at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Le Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier, Beethovenfest Bonn, Miami International Piano Festival, Kulturpalast Dresden and LuganoMusica, among others; a tour of duo recitals for piano and electronic marimba with Lukas Ligeti to mark György Ligeti’s centenary in 2023; and performances with orchestras including the London Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester Basel and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, with conductors such as Iván Fischer, Karina Canellakis, Hans Graf, John Axelrod, Ken-David Masur, Finnegan Downie-Dear and Daniele Rustioni.

Namoradze was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1992 and grew up in Budapest, Hungary. After completing his undergraduate in Budapest, Vienna and Florence, he moved to New York for his master’s at The Juilliard School and his doctorate at the CUNY Graduate Center, holding the Graduate Center Fellowship and winning the Barry Brook Award for exceptional achievement. His teachers and mentors have included Emanuel Ax, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Zoltán Kocsis, Matti Raekallio, András Schiff and Eliso Virsaladze in piano, and John Corigliano in composition. Namoradze also holds a postgraduate degree in neuropsychology from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College, London, where his research interests included the effects of mental practice and mindfulness on musical performance. He is the author of the book “Ligeti’s Macroharmonies”, published by Springer in the Computational Music Science series, and his compositions are published by Muse Press. Namoradze serves on the staff of The Juilliard School, where he deputizes for the piano faculty.