Panos Karan (born 1982) is a British classical pianist, conductor and composer of Greek origin. He was born in Crete, and grew up in Athens, where he graduated from the

American College of Greece The American College of Greece (ACG) is a private college and high school in Agia Paraskevi, Greece. It was founded by United Church of Christ American missionaries in 1875. It was originally a primary and secondary school for girls. As of 2020, ...

. He studied piano at the

Royal Academy of Music The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...

as a student of

Sulamita Aronovsky Sulamita Aronovsky, born in Lithuania in 1929, died in 2022, is a classical pianist and piano teacher who spent her formative years in Russia, moving to London in 1971. Her teachers include Lev Barenboim, Abram Schatzkes, Grigory Ginsburg and ...

. He made his professional debut performance at the

Southbank Centre Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames (between Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge). It comprises three main performance venues (the Royal Festival Hall including the Nat ...

at age 19.

Performances

St Martin-in-the-Fields St Martin-in-the-Fields is a Church of England parish church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. It is dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours. There has been a church on the site since at least the mediev ...

on 15 April 2004;

Hermitage Theatre The Hermitage Theatre ( rus, Эрмитажный Театр, Èrmitážnyj Teátr, ɪrʲmʲɪˈtaʐnɨj tʲɪˈatər) in Saint Petersburg, Russia is one of five Hermitage Museum, Hermitage buildings lining the Palace Embankment of the Neva Riv ...

on 17 January 2008;

Konzerthaus, Vienna The Konzerthaus is a concert hall located in Vienna, Austria, which opened in 1913. It is situated in the third district just at the edge of the first district in Vienna. Since it was founded it has always tried to emphasise both traditional and ...

on 6 May 2011;

Weill Recital Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets. Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by ...

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...

on 19 May 2007, 9 June 2009,11 October 2011 and 8 June 2018;

Athens Concert Hall The Athens Concert Hall (Greek: Μέγαρον Μουσικής Αθηνών, ''Mégaron Mousikis Athinon'') is a concert hall located on Vasilissis Sofias Avenue in Athens, Greece. The Hall was inaugurated in 1991 with two halls. Since then it ...

on 14 January 2011 and 26 June 2013;

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Oji Hall on 16 March 2014;

Queen Elizabeth Hall The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a music venue on the South Bank in London, England, that hosts classical, jazz, and avant-garde music, talks and dance performances. It was opened in 1967, with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten. The ...

on 2 April 2014 and 1 April 2019; Teatro Nacional Sucre on 13 December 2012 and 29 April 2015; Blue Rose Hall at

Suntory Hall The is a concert venue in the central Akasaka district of Tokyo, Japan. Part of the Ark Hills complex, it consists of a main concert hall, widely considered one of the finest in the world for its acoustics — indeed Herbert von Karajan called i ...

on 14 March 2014, 3 August 2015 and 23 June 2018;

St John's, Smith Square St John's Smith Square is a redundant church in the centre of Smith Square, Westminster, London. Sold to a charitable trust as a ruin following firebombing in the Second World War, it was restored as a concert hall. This Grade I listed churc ...

in November 2008 and 1 June 2015;

Tokyo Opera City is a skyscraper located in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Completed in 1996, it stands 234 metres (768 feet) high and has 54 floors. The tower is the third-tallest building in Shinjuku, Tokyo and seventh-tallest in Tokyo. The closest train stat ...

on 20 August 2015;

Symphony Hall, Boston Symphony Hall is a concert hall located at 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts, opened in 1900. Designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead and White, it was built for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which continues to make the ha ...

on 3 April 2016;

Cadogan Hall Cadogan Hall is a 950-seat capacity concert hall in Sloane Terrace in Chelsea in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England. The resident music ensemble at Cadogan Hall is the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), the first ...

on 11 June 2018;

on 6 August 2018;

Sydney Opera House The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architec ...

on 3 February 2020. Karan's composition ''Surupanga'' was premiered at St.John's, Smiths Square, London on 1 June 2015.

Recordings

Karan has recorded Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3 with Toby Purser, conductor, and the Orion Symphony Orchestra. In 2018 he recorded the 24 Chopin Études in live concert at London's Cadogan Hall.

Awards

Karan was laureate at the 2004 "

José Iturbi José Iturbi Báguena (28 November 189528 June 1980) was a Spanish conductor, pianist and harpsichordist. He appeared in several Hollywood films of the 1940s, notably playing himself in the musicals ''Thousands Cheer'' (1943), '' Music for Mill ...

" International Piano Competition in Valencia, Spain.

Humanitarian work

In 2011, he founded charity organisation Keys of Change, 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. With Κeys of Change he has completed musical projects in the Amazon, Sierra Leone, Uganda, India, Serbia and Japan. 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. In April 2014 and 2019 he performed with the Fukushima Youth Sinfoinetta at the

, London, in August 2015 at the

and in April 2016 at

. He has helped create the Kolkata Youth Orchestra and the Accra Youth Sinfonietta.

Personal life

Karan has resided in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

since 2000.

References

External links

Panos Karan's home pageKeys of Change
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karan, Panos 1982 births Living people Greek classical pianists British classical pianists 21st-century classical pianists