Dizhou Zhao has been hailed as “a fully fledged artistic force” by The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Fanfare Magazine says the pianist “offers the blend of passion and intelligence that characterizes the mature artist” and that he “lives fully in the music.” Mr. Zhao was born and raised in China, where he began studying the piano at the age of four in his hometown of Shanghai. By age seven he performed his first public concert and won First Prize in a competition in Shanghai. Just one year later, he was invited to record five of Mozart’s piano sonatas, and at eleven, he enrolled in the preparatory Music School of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. At age 17, he was invited to participate in the Cong-A International Piano Competition in Seoul, as its youngest competitor, and performed Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra the following year, with only ten-days notice.

A winner of Astral’s 2012 National Auditions, he is also winner of numerous competition prizes, Mr. Zhao captured the top prize at Australia’s Southern Highlands International Piano Competition, the International Keyboard Institute & Festival’s Dorothy MacKenzie Artist Recognition Scholarship Awards, and the Louisiana International Piano Competition, which included concert engagements in France, Russia, and Australia as well as a solo performance in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. He has also been a prizewinner in the Tbilisi and Viardo international piano competitions, as well as the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati, and received the Special Recognition Award from the San Antonio International Competition and the Special Chopin Award at the first USASU International Piano Competition in Tempe, Arizona… Read more