Ilya Itin.

     Born in Sverdlovsk Russia, Ilya Itin studied from the age of five with Natalia Litvinova at the Sverdlovsk Music School for gifted children. Later he graduated with the highest honors from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory where his teacher was the inspirational Lev Naumov. Since 1990 Itin has lived in the United States. He won 1st Prize and the Chopin Prize in the 9th Robert Casadesus Competition in Cleveland in 1991 and now performs throughout the world, from South America to China.
     In 1996 Itin was the outright winner of the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition by unanimous decision of the jury, he also claimed the Contemporary Music Prize and won the hearts of the television audience in the BBC viewers' poll.  Since then he has blazed a trail across Europe, from France to Israel and performed throughout the UK; he made his BBC Proms debut in 1997, with the BBC Philharmonic performing Grieg's Piano Concerto. Itin has performed with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Prague Symphony, St Petersburg Philharmonic, The Philharmonia and the Tokyo Philharmonic.
     He has worked with leading conductors as diverse as Christoph von Dohnanyi, Neeme Jarvi, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Mikhail Pletnev and Sir Simon Rattle under whose baton he made a highly praised Vienna debut performing the Concerto No. 3 by Rachmaninov as soloist on Rattle's farewell European tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. 
     In the USA he has given performances with the Cleveland Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra. He gave an impressive open air performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 to an enthusiastic audience of 10,000 in California and a universally commended performance of Piano Concerto No 4 by Beethoven in Florida.