Ian Munro
Ian Munro has emerged as one of Australia’s most distinguished and awarded musicians, a pianist and composer whose career has taken him to thirty countries across Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.
His 2003 Premier Grand Prix at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition for composers in Belgium remains a unique achievement for an Australian. It followed multiple prizes in international piano competitions in Spain (Maria Canals), Italy (Busoni), Portugal (Vianna da Motta) and the UK, where second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1987 established his international profile.
After early training in Melbourne with Roy Shepherd, a pupil of Alfred Cortot, he furthered his studies in Vienna, London and Italy with Noretta Conci, Guido Agosti and Michele Campanella. His international career began in the UK, with performances alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia, English Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players, BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and wide BBC broadcasts. Elsewhere he has appeared with orchestras in Poland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, the USA, China and New Zealand, and with all the major Australian orchestras, in a repertoire of more than sixty piano concertos. A widely experienced chamber musician, he joined the Australia Ensemble in Sydney in 2000.
His recordings include work for ABC Classics, Hyperion, Cala, Naxos, Marco Polo and Warehouse. Among them are the collected music of Tasmanian composer Katharine Parker and Elena Kats-Chernin’s piano concerto, commissioned for him by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Seasons have brought concertos by Ravel, Munro, Mozart, Kats-Chernin, Gershwin and Edwards, and tours to the UK, Russia, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Uzbekistan, Australia and New Zealand in recital, chamber music and concerto. Increasingly in demand as a composer, he was Featured Composer for Musica Viva in 2011; his flute concerto and song cycle Three Birds received their premieres in 2016 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Australia Ensemble. Chamber collaboration with cellist Zoe Knighton is heard on Northern Cello (MD3420).
Ian Munro is featured on the following titles
Northern Cello
Music for cello from northern European composers. Zoe Knighton and pianist Ian Munro centre the programme on Grieg’s romantic sonata, with Sibelius’s Op. 78 pieces, Vasks’s solo Gramata Cellam and Pärt’s Fratres.
Ian Munro is a member of
Tall Poppies Ensemble
An occasional studio ensemble of Australian chamber musicians, the Tall Poppies Ensemble records Australian chamber music with crisp brilliance and outstanding precision: outback pulse, contemplative stillness, Asian-inflected lyricism and political colour.