Panos Karan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Panos Karan (born 1982)[1][2] is a British[3][4] classical pianist,[5] conductor[6] and composer[7] of Greek origin.[8] He was born in Crete,[1][9] and grew up in Athens,[2] where he graduated from the American College of Greece.[10] He studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music as a student of Sulamita Aronovsky.[11] He made his professional debut performance at the Southbank Centre at age 19.[12][13]
- St Martin-in-the-Fields on 15 April 2004;[14]
- Hermitage Theatre on 17 January 2008;[15]
- Konzerthaus, Vienna on 6 May 2011;[16]
- Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall on 19 May 2007,[17] 9 June 2009,11 October 2011[18] and 8 June 2018;[19][20]
- Athens Concert Hall on 14 January 2011[21] and 26 June 2013;[22]
- Tokyo Oji Hall on 16 March 2014;[23]
- Queen Elizabeth Hall on 2 April 2014[24][3] and 1 April 2019;[25]
- Teatro Nacional Sucre on 13 December 2012[26][27] and 29 April 2015;[28]
- Blue Rose Hall at Suntory Hall on 14 March 2014,[29] 3 August 2015[30][31] and 23 June 2018;[32]
- St John's, Smith Square in November 2008[33] and 1 June 2015;[34][35]
- Tokyo Opera City on 20 August 2015;[36]
- Symphony Hall, Boston on 3 April 2016;[37][38]
- Cadogan Hall on 11 June 2018;[39]
- Suntory Hall on 6 August 2018;[40]
- Sydney Opera House on 3 February 2020.[41]
Karan's composition Surupanga was premiered at St.John's, Smiths Square, London on 1 June 2015.[42]
Recordings
Karan has recorded Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3 with Toby Purser, conductor, and the Orion Symphony Orchestra.[43][44]
In 2018 he recorded the 24 Chopin Études in live concert at London's Cadogan Hall.[45]
Awards
Karan was laureate at the 2004 "José Iturbi" International Piano Competition in Valencia, Spain.[17][46]
Humanitarian work
In 2011, he founded charity organisation Keys of Change,[5][47] with the motto "Can music change the world? We believe it can", an organisation aiming to use music as a tool to improve to improve and empower the lives of young people around the world.[12][48][49] With Κeys of Change he has completed musical projects in the Amazon,[50][51] Sierra Leone,[52] Uganda,[53] India,[53] Serbia[54] and Japan.[47]
In 2012, with the support of Keys of Change, he founded the Fukushima Youth Sinfoinetta, an orchestra made up of young musicians that came together in the wake of the 2011 disaster.[55] In April 2014 and 2019 he performed with the Fukushima Youth Sinfoinetta at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London,[56] in August 2015 at the Tokyo Opera City[56] and in April 2016 at Symphony Hall, Boston.[37]
He has helped create the Kolkata Youth Orchestra[57] and the Accra Youth Sinfonietta.[58]
