Jury

Katsunori Ishii won the 3rd place prize at the 59th Japan Music Competition while studying at Tokyo College of Music as a scholarship student. He won the 4th prize at the Robert Casadesus International Piano Competition in Cleveland, and the 1st prize at the Hamamatsu International Piano Academy Competition in 1997.
In 1992, Ishii was invited to join the fellowship program at the Tanglewood Music Festival, and studied piano and chamber music with Leon Fleisher and Peter Serkin. At the graduate school of Mannes School of Music in New York, he studied piano with Rudolf Serkin's beloved disciple Stephanie Brown, music analysis with Carl Schachter, conducting with Michael Charlie, and graduated with the J. Fiedelman Piano Prize in 1996. He returned to Japan temporarily in 1994 and held his Tokyo debut recital at the recital hall of Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, co-sponsored by the Japan Federation of Musicians and the Agency for Cultural Affairs.

Katsunori Ishii has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras including Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra New York, Ohio Chamber Orchestra, Costa Rica National Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra, Kyusyu Symphony Orchestra, Osaka Symphony Orchestra, Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra and Hamamatsu Philharmonic Orchestra, and has appeared on Nippon TV’s “Midnight Concert” and others.
In Haydn Year 2009, he was invited to the Viana do Castelo International Music Festival in Portugal, where he performed Haydn's concerto in F major with his own cadenza, which was well received. In recent years, he has been invited to perform at Weikersheim Music Festival in Germany, Engers Music Festival in Germany, Xi'an Conservatory of Music in China, Piano Summer Academy at Lago Maggiore Lesa in Italy, etc. He has also held masterclasses around the world and put his effort into teaching young pianists.
He has sat on the juries of international piano competitions such as the 3rd ASEAN International Chopin Piano Competition in Malaysia, California International Young Artists Piano Competition and Japan Music Competition, and has been a member of Experts & Screening Committee of Hamamatsu International Piano Competition since 2006.
He is currently Professor of piano at Tokyo College of Music.
CD: Los Requiebros: Granados, Stravinsky, Schubert (OVCT-00133)
Schubert: 4 Impromptus, D.935; Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (SONARE-1002)