The Keyboard Trust

'The imaginative work of the Keyboard Trust corresponds closely to my own desire to see young artists helped to develop their talents to the full. To achieve this by creating new opportunities for them to perform, and building up new audiences to hear them, is a service to music as a whole.' - Claudio Abbado

John Leech, co-founder and Chairman of Trustees of The Keyboard Trust, announced yesterday that former Busoni International Piano Competition winner and Keyboard Trust prize winner Alexander Romanovsky has been appointed as Honorary Artistic Director of the Trust.

At just twenty-eight, Romanovsky is recognised as one of the great stars of the piano world, welcomed from New York to Tokyo, from Moscow to every other European capital. His 2010 Wigmore Hall debut has remained a benchmark for fidelity, depth and elegance. Lately made Chairman of the Krainev Competition in his native Ukraine (though now an Italian citizen), his performance schedule and high-level contacts give him every opportunity to identify the young talent that the Keyboard Trust exists to foster, and to extend the network of performance venues within and beyond the present eleven countries.

Created in 1991, and numbering among its trustees Claudio Abbado, Alfred Brendel, Clive Gillinson and Leslie Howard, the Trust exists to promote highly gifted young keyboard players on the international stage. Romanovsky, himself a beneficiary of the Trust, commented: 'It's time to give something back', explaining his deep commitment to the Trust and its goals.

Romanovsky will succeed Noretta Conci-Leech, former concert pianist, well-known teacher and the Keyboard Trust's co-founder, who has guided the organisation for the last twenty-one years, during which it has benefited the careers of some one-hundred-and-fifty young pianists, harpsichordists and organists. Her deputy, Elena Vorotko, will remain in place to support the Artistic Director, with a brief to focus on enlarging her specialist field of baroque music and performance (she has a doctorate in this field of music). This will include increasing the organ recitals that the Trust supports in the Temple Church, London and increasing the profile of talented harpsichordists.

A further development at the Keyboard Trust will see Tatiana Romanovska, founder of MIR Artists (a concert and artist management agency, which incidentally has ably assisted her brother Alexander Romanovsky's career), taking over the general management of the Trust progressively from the Chairman of Trustees, John Leech. It is hoped that the goodwill the Trust has built up, in particular with its more than sixty partners and concert venues, will remain strong to support this excellent, vigorous and ambitious young team.

Information: www.keyboardtrust.org

Posted: 21 September 2012

Next item: Carlo Curley >>