Biography

Harry Rylance is a British-Korean pianist and a current Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music. He has performed in some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls including the Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Grand Hall of Budapest, the Seoul Arts Centre, the Glenn Gould Concert Hall, and at international music festivals including Heidelberg, Aspen, Dartington and Petworth.

He has featured in live broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and From The Top, America’s leading classical music radio programme. He has performed with orchestras and ensembles including the London Sinfonietta, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Liszt Academy Symphony Orchestra, Boston Civic Symphony Orchestra, the Nash Ensemble, the Royal Manson Ensemble, and the Royal Academy of Music Orchestra. In 2019, at the UK Foreign Office, he gave a solo performance to an audience of international dignitaries including five former British Prime Ministers.

Harry graduated with First Class Honours (BMus and MA) and a Diploma (DipRAM) from the Royal Academy of Music, achieving the highest mark in the 2020 postgraduate piano final recitals. He is also the Academy’s nominee for the Musician’s Company Silver Medal, a prestigious award to recognise the most outstanding students of the UK conservatoires. In September 2020, he was appointed as the Royal Academy Opera’s Répétiteur Fellow, as well as a Chamber Music Fellow at RAM.

While at the Academy, Harry studied under Head of Piano, Professor Joanna MacGregor CBE. In earlier years, he was tutored by the late Zoltán Kocsis, and by Péter Nagy and Sergey Schepkin. He has also performed in masterclasses with Stephen Hough, Steven Osborne, Jenö Jandó, Thomas Hampson, Adrian Brendel, and Nicola Benedetti.

In addition to his solo, orchestral and opera work, Harry is also a member of Trio Mazzolini with Jack Greed violin and Yurie Lee cello. The trio are current Chamber Music Fellows at the Royal Academy of Music and have recently performed a live broadcast on CBC Radio at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto.

Harry is the recipient of numerous awards including the Christian Carpenter Recital Prize, the Isaacs and Pirani Piano Trio Prize, the Elena Gerhardt Accompaniment Prize, the May Mukle/Douglas Cameron Prize and the Skelton MA scholarship, generously supported by the Grand Duo Charitable Trust.

Beyond his dedication to the core canon, Harry is also passionate about new and experimental music. British composer Daniel Kidane, whose music opened the 2019 BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, selected Harry to premiere his solo piano work Carillon at a PRS Foundation concert. Harry has also been selected to premiere new works in 2021 by renowned American composer, Augusta Read Thomas, and the LPO-designated composer, Keting Sun, whose piece is dedicated to him. He is also working with the film composer Garry Judd to record a collection of his solo piano works.

Award: Silver Medal, Royal Academy of Music 2020

Page updated: December 2020

Photo Credit: Unknown