Vestards Å imkus

Vestards Šimkus ( born August 21, 1984 in Jurmala ) is a Latvian pianist.

Life

He started to learn piano at age five at the music school Emīls Dārziņš in Riga. Later were his teachers Dmitri Alexandrovich Bashkirov and Claudio Martinez Mehner in Madrid, Daniel Pollack in Los Angeles, Vadim Suchanov in Munich. His composition teacher was Peteris Vasks. He was one of the master classes, among others, Lazar Berman, Peter Frankl and Igor Zhukov.

He worked since 1998 in Europe and the United States. He previously worked there together, among others, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Czech Philharmonic, the Kremerata Baltica, the Borodin Quartet, the violinist Isabelle van Keulen and the Northwest German Philharmonic. In Germany, he joined the Kissinger Sommer and the 17th Usedom Music Festival in appearance.

Some of his own compositions published by Schott Music.

Prices

In addition to numerous prizes and awards in his home country Šimkus reached at the International Piano Competition in Stockholm in 2001, at the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Los Angeles in 2002, at the 5th Kissinger Piano Olympus in 2007 and at the 55th Maria Canals Competition in Barcelona in 2009 respectively to first place.

In 2005 he received the Order of the White Star of Estonia.