“Shmukler is a volcano”; “the name of Ilya Shmukler should be remembered” is how the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described this pianist after his triumph at the Concours Géza Anda 2024 in Zurich, Switzerland, where he won four major awards in addition to the First Prize.

When he was 3, Ilya’s mother found him jumping on the bed and singing Robertino Loreti’s “Jamaica” beautifully. It was important to his parents, however, to raise their boy as a well-rounded person, so his early years were also spent with school, table tennis, and ballroom dancing before focusing on music.
Since then, Ilya Shmukler made solo appearances in Europe and North America, and performed with such artists as Mikhail Pletnev, Paavo Järvi, Marin Alsop, Nicholas McGegan, Junichi Hirokami, Anne-Marie McDermott, Anton Nel and David Radzynski. Collaborations include the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Mariinsky, Fort Worth Symphony, Sendai Philharmonic, Kansas City Chamber, Bayer-Symphoniker, and New Music Orchestras.

 To have become a finalist and the recipient of the award for the “Best Performance of a Mozart Concerto” at the 2022 Cliburn Competition is a milestone in his career, as is his New York debut as a winner of the Carnegie Weill Recital Hall Debut Audition in 2022.

 An alumnus of the Moscow State Conservatoire under the guidance of Elena Kuznetsova and Sergey Kuznetsov, Ilya continues his studies at Park University (USA) with Stanislav Ioudenitch.