Indian-American pianist Pallavi Mahidhara made her orchestral debut at the age of 10, performing at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and her Master’s Degree at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. She studied for several years with Dimitri Bashkirov at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía, where she is now the Artistic Advisor and a Piano Pr ofessor for their Music & Culture Summer Camp in Madrid, Spain.
Pallavi is the Second Prize winner and Young Audience Award winner of the 69th Geneva International Piano Competition, and of the VI International Prokofiev Competition in Saint Petersburg. She has won the Steinway Advancement Prize in Germany and has received, on multiple occasions, the “Sobresaliente” Award from the hands of Queen Sofía of Spain.
She has appeared in solo and orchestral concerts across five continents, performing at the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Grand Hall of the Dimitri Shostakovich Philharmonia in Saint Petersburg. Sir András Schiff selected her for his concert series “Building Bridges,” a platform to support and promote young pianists.
Pallavi has performed at important festivals such as Marlboro Music and Verbier Festival. Pallavi’s musical projects have covered an extensive range, from standard Classical works to music of contemporary and living composers, to fusion and crossover projects. She has collaborated with drummer Questlove of “The Roots” and international singer/songwriter Keren Ann for a genre-defying concert, fusing the classical world with hip hop, jazz, and folk-pop artists, at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.
She gave performances of Steve Reich’s Double Sextet with the multi-Grammy-Award-winning ensemble, “eighth blackbird.” She has premiered a large piano work, titled “Fantasia and Fugue in C,” by one of India’s leading film composers, Vanraj Bhatia.
Pallavi Mahidhara gave her début performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival in 2021.

Ever since Kit Armstrong set foot on the stages of international venues, he has never ceased to amaze classical music audiences. Hardly any other young artist is well-versed in so many areas, with such a universal upbringing. Described by the New York Times as a “brilliant pianist” who combines “musical maturity and youthful daring in his exceptional playing,” Kit Armstrong has developed a unique artistic approach, naturally combining a profound, intense study of music with other arts, the natural sciences, and mathematics. His repertoire ranges from the dawn of keyboard music in the 16th century with the English Virginalist School up to the music of our time.
Armstrong collaborates with many of the world’s most sought-after conductors, including Christian Thielemann, Herbert Blomstedt, Riccardo Chailly, Kent Nagano, Manfred Honeck, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mario Venzago, and Robin Ticciati. He has appeared with some of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhaus Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Recent solo recitals brought him to the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Munich Prinzregententheater, the Ruhr Piano Festival, Philharmonie de Luxembourg, and Cologne Philharmonie.
An enthusiastic chamber music recitalist, Kit Armstrong has developed close artistic partnerships with other leading instrumental and vocal artists.
Together with Renaud Capuçon he presented the complete Mozart violin sonatas at the Salzburg Mozartwoche Festival and at Berlin’s Boulez Hall. With Christiane Karg, Julian Prégardien, and Benjamin Appl he has performed important Lied repertoire. Edition Peters publishes his compositions.
Commissioners include the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Musikkollegium Winterthur.
Born in 1992 in Los Angeles, Armstrong studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. At 7, he started studying composition at Chapman University and physics at California State University, later also chemistry and mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania and mathematics at the Imperial College of London. He earned a master’s degree in pure mathematics at the University of Paris VI.
Alfred Brendel, who has guided Armstrong as teacher and mentor since 2005, ascribes to him “an understanding of the great piano works that combines freshness and subtlety, emotion and intellect”.
Their relationship was captured in the film Set the Piano Stool on Fir e by Mark Kidel.
In 2021, Kit Armstrong performed at the Ruhr Piano F estival for the 12th time.

Born in 2004, Eva Gevorgyan is currently a student at the prestigious Central Music School for Gifted Children at the Moscow Conservatory. When asked who her musical models are, she names Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Emil Gilels, Mikhail Pletnev – and Natalia Trull, her teacher at the Central Music School. Eva Gevorgyan has won First Prizes at the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists, the Grand Piano International Competition in Moscow, the Robert Schumann Piano Competition in Düsseldorf, the International Piano Competition in Gorizia (Italy), the Santa Cecilia Competition in Porto, and the T. Amirejibi International Piano Competition in Borjomi (Geor gia).
Eva Gevorgyan has actively participated in masterclasses imparted by Dmitri Bashkirov, Stanislav Ioudenitch, Pavel Gililov, Piotr Paleczny, and Klaus Hellwig. She has concertized in Switzerland, Poland, Russia, Italy, Germany, Armenia, and the UK, where she was awarded the Elena Cobb Star Prize at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Eva became the Discovery Winner at the ICMA (International Classical Music Awards) in Switzerland, and was awarded the Junior Prize at the Eppan Junior Piano Academy in Italy. She currently receives a scholarship from the International Academy of Music in Liechtenstein.
As laureate of the 2020 Ruhr Piano Festival Prize, Evgeny Kissin selected Eva Gevorgyan as scholarship holder of the Festival, leading up to her début performance in the 2021 season.

Roman Borisov was born in 2002. Since 2010 he has studied at the Novosibirsk Conservatoire Music College in the class of legendary piano professor Mary Lebenzon. He already makes regular appearances throughout Russia, having performed at the Novosibirsk Philharmonic, the Chamber Hall of the Moscow Philharmonic, the Concert Hall of the Jarosław Philharmonic (Poland), and the Kazakhstan Central Concert Hall (Astana) with such orchestras as the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia, the Novosibirsk Academic Symphony Orchestra, and the Astana Symphony Orchestra. He has taken part in the International ArsLonga Festival in Moscow, the Piano-en-Valois Festival (France), and the Trans- Siberian Art Festival (Novosibirsk).
Borisov has won prizes at several Russian and international competitions, including the Vladimir Krainev Piano Competition in Ukraine and the Youth Delphic Games of the CIS Member States (Gold Medal). In 2018 he was a prizewinner at the International Gr and Piano Competition in Moscow.
Borisov has also frequently participated in the music projects of the Vladimir Spivakov Foundation, and is increasingly attracting notice in western Europe; thus, for instance, he was one of the academy participants at Verbier Festival in 2019. He gave his début performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival in 2021.