Recognized internationally as a prime interpreter of the music of Chopin, Kevin Kenner’s career was launched in 1990 when he was awarded the top prize at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. That same year he also won the Terence Judd Award in London and 3rd prize at the 1990 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Kenner’s achievements have won him international acclaim. The Chicago Tribune praised him as “one of the finest American pianists to come along in years.” Britain’s Independent described one of his recitals as “…the best performance I have ever heard in the concert hall of all four of Chopin’s ‘Ballades’.” The Financial Times hailed Professor Kenner as a “player of grace, subtle variety, and strength with a mature grasp of dramatic structure and proportion.” And the Washington Post proclaimed him “a major talent… an artist whose intellect, imagination and pianism speak powerfully and eloquently.” Conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, a former associate of the late Artur Rubinstein, said Professor Kenner’s work was among the most sensitive and beautiful he had ever heard.

He has concertized and recorded over the last decade as a duo partner of violinist Kyung-Wha Chung and has performed with the Tokyo, Escher, Belcea, Mosaiques, Apollon Musagete, Endellion, and Vogler Quartets. He has been invited to appear at the Verbier Festival, Warsaw’s “Chopin and His Europe” Festival, and the PyeongChang Festival. A distinguished recording artist, Kenner’s interpretations of works by Paderewski and Chopin were each picked as recordings of the month by Gramophone, which also singled out his recording “Resonances” as one of 50 of the greatest recordings of Chopin works. The most recent recording of his own chamber arrangements of the Chopin Concertos was nominated by BBC Magazine for the 2020 Recording of the Year. He was awarded two Fryderyks for his recordings of works of Piazzolla (2006) and concert works of Paderewski (2011).

After teaching for more than a decade as a professor at London’s Royal College of Music, Kenner accepted a post at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, where he continues to prepare many young talented pianists for international performance careers. Following his three-year tenure as Visiting Professor at the Academy of Music in Łódź, Poland he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2018. In 2019 he was awarded the Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumnus Award as well as the Amicus Poloniae Award from the Polish Ambassador to the U.S. In February 2020 he chaired the jury of the Chopin Foundation’s National Chopin Competition in Miami. And in 2021 he served as vice-chairman of the jury of the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

Krzysztof Jablonski is a Laureate of the F. Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1985. He has won numerous top prizes at international piano competitions in Milan, Palm Beach, Monza, Dublin, New York, and Calgary, and a Gold Medal at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv.

For more than 30 years, Jablonski has been active in performing solo and chamber music as well as with orchestras on stages in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Israel in prestigious concert halls, including appearances on the Master Concert Series at Berliner Philharmonie. A frequent guest of many orchestras, performed under the baton of V. Gergiev, A. Boreyko, K. Penderecki, M. Pijarowski, J. Semkow, J. Kaspszyk, J. Maksymiuk, G. Nowak, F. Brueggen, W. Bothe, Y. Tezuka, T. Shimono, A. Wit, J. Krenz and with prominent ensembles such as Orchestra of the 18th Century, Berner Symphonie-Orchester, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, Duesseldorfer Symphoniker, Hamburger Symphoniker, Jenaer Philharmonie, Festival Orchestra of the Grand Teton Music Festival, Helsinki Philharmonic, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Kyushu Symphony Orchestra, Kirishima Festival Orchestra, National Philharmonic Orchestra in Warsaw, National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice. As a chamber music recitalist, he performed with Tomasz Strahl, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Arto Noras, Konstanty Andrzej Kulka, and Teng Li – to name just a few. He is a “Warsaw Piano Quintet” member, founded by W. Szpilman in 1962.

Jablonski’s somewhat romantic nature shaped his taste and interest in music. Besides the most famous works Jablonski has in his repertoire, he also plays some less-known compositions such as Concertos by F. Riess, H. Litolff, and E. Dohnanyi. He was invited to perform for ballet, opera, theatre spectacles, and spectacular, multi-discipline projects with multimedia presentations and lights, such as Scriabin’s “Prometheus” with Duesseldorfer Symphoniker. A special place in his career has many collaborations with ballets: “Chopin – The Romantic Artist” choreographed by Patrice Bart, Ballet “Fortepianissimo” choreographed by Lorca Massine, “The Lady of the Camellias” choreographed by John Neumeier and “Our Chopin” choreographed by Liam Scarlett and Krzysztof Pastor at the National Opera in Warsaw. They were shown to the public multiple times; some were even played outside of Poland. Jablonski also performed the original piano version of Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande. He was invited to perform during the opening of the Wiener Opernball in Vienna together with the Vienna State Opera Ballet, choreographed by Giorgio Madia. He played for a crowd of twelve thousand with the Grant Park Orchestra and K. Urbanski at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park in Chicago.

In February 2013, Jablonski performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto with Maestro Valery Gergiev and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra during the fundraising event “Clean Baltic Sea Concert” in Helsinki. This performance was streamed live over the Internet and recorded by Finnish Radio and TV.

2013 also brought Jablonski to Japan, where he performed Beethoven’s Concerto with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra following his successful appearances with the Kirishima Festival Orchestra in 2012. In 2014, he played during the Kirishima Festival again. In 2015, celebrating 30 years of his artistic career, he performed Chopin’s Concerto No. 1 with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra – the same Piano Concerto he played during the Finals of the F. Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1985, where his international career began. Also, in 2015, he performed Chopin’s E minor Concerto once more with the Warsaw Philharmonic under the baton of Maestro Jacek Kaspszyk. Jablonski concluded his anniversary year performing Saint-Saëns’ 2nd Piano Concerto in G minor with Warsaw Philharmonic under the direction of Patrick Fournillier in February 2016.

He has made live recordings for radio and television in many countries and numerous CDs in Germany, Japan, and Poland. The F. Chopin National Institute invited him to record complete works by Chopin both on modern and historical pianos. Two first CDs (Etudes) were released in 2016 and 2017, and more will come soon. Jablonski himself says it is his once-in-a-lifetime project, but he hopes to be able to complete this work in a few years.

Studied with Janina Butor and Prof. Andrzej Jasiński, he has worked during master classes with R. Kerer and N. Magaloff. He graduated with honors in 1987 from the Academy of Music in Katowice and later earned his Doctorate in 1996. He was a tenured professor at The F. Chopin University of Music in Warsaw from 2004 to 2017 and a piano faculty member at the Mount Royal University – The Conservatory in Calgary and the University of Calgary. He has been a Morningside Music Bridge Program faculty member since 1998. He was also a Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lethbridge from 2016 to 2017. In addition to academic responsibilities, he presents master classes and lectures. He has delivered seminars for piano teachers. Jablonski specializes in piano technique, helping many people achieve better results.

He is a jury member at international piano competitions, including Chopin Piano Competitions in Warsaw, Toronto/Mississauga (Chair of the Jury), Miami, Tokyo, and Foshan in China. He was recently on the Jury of the Lang Lang Shenzhen Futian International Piano Festival Competition, the 3rd International Competition of Polish Music in Rzeszów, Poland (Chair of the Jury), the 5th China Shenzhen International Piano Concerto Competition, the 12th Gulangyu Piano Art Week Competition, 2023 ZJCM & DEQING International Piano Festival Competition, and RNCM James Mottram International Piano Competition.

Jablonski is the Head of Piano and keyboard and Academic Leader of Piano and keyboard at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He performed with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra in January 2023 during the final GBA Festival concert and during the 2023 Belt and Road International Music Festival opening concert in September 2023.

John Rink is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the music of Fryderyk Chopin. A graduate of Princeton University, King’s College London and the University of Cambridge, he also earned a Concert Recital Diploma and Premier Prix in piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. He won many competitions as a young pianist. As a performer, he has focussed recently on period instruments, and he is a renowned authority on playing Pleyel pianos. He is an award-winning expert on the manuscript and printed sources for Chopin’s works, the performance history of his music over the past 200 years (including Chopin’s own playing style), analysis of the repertoire, editorial practices and aspects of critical reception. Since 2009, when he became Director of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice, he has been Professor of Musical Performance Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is also Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at St John’s College, Cambridge and a visiting professor at Royal Holloway London, Queen Mary London and the Shanghai and Yong Siew Toh (Singapore) conservatories. He is the author of many works on Chopin, including Chopin Studies 2 (with Jim Samson, 1994), Chopin: The Piano Concertos (1997) and the award-winning Annotated Catalogue of Chopin’s First Editions (with Christophe Grabowski, 2010). He is Series Editor of The Complete Chopin – A New Critical Edition, published by Peters, and General Editor of a new series of books on musical performance (OUP, 2016). He also directs two major online projects: Chopin’s First Editions Online (www.chopinonline.ac.uk/cfeo) and Online Chopin Variorum Edition (www.chopinonline.ac.uk/ocve). Since 2003, John Rink has served on the Programme Committee of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute.