Kevin Kanisius Suherman

Kevin began to play in public at nine, in school concerts, competitions and master classes. He took first prize in the Yamaha competitions at Bandung in December 2004 and February 2005. In July 2005 and July 2006 he attended master classes in Salzburg with Professor Kämmerling.

In October 2005 he received an Indonesian National Award (MURI) for performing fifty classical, pop and jazz pieces non-stop without a score. He then appeared widely in public concerts, on television and at charity events for victims of the Yogyakarta earthquake, and gave further concerts in Singapore, Beijing, Bali, Surabaya, Jakarta and Bandung.

In June 2007 in Bandung he played the first movements of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with orchestra under André de Quadros. In 2008 he played the first movement of Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto with the Melbourne Grammar School Symphony Orchestra under Martin Rutherford, and later that year travelled with Max Cooke and fellow students to Manchester, Freiburg, Vienna and Salzburg for master classes. In 2009, at his first Team of Pianists concert at Rippon Lea, Melbourne, he played Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 2 No. 3.

In January 2010, as a Schimmel Piano artist, he made a solo recording of Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven and Spanish music (MCD 431) in Melbourne. In April 2010 he gave the full Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 at Aula Simfonia Jakarta under Stephen Tong. In September 2010 he performed Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song with the Melbourne Grammar School Symphony Orchestra under Mark Drummond.

In November 2010 he played at Melbourne Town Hall in a charity concert for East Timor. In December 2010, again with the school orchestra under Drummond, he performed the finale of Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto at Waseda University’s Okuma Auditorium in Tokyo. He continued classical piano studies with Max Cooke while also learning the violin at Melbourne Grammar School, and played in the orchestra’s first violin section.