This prize and the RPS-Duet Young Composer Prize ran for two years between 2016-2017.

Born in London (2001), Noah Zhou is an aspiring classical pianist. He began learning the piano at the age of five with Tra Nguyen. He is a music scholar at St. Paul’s School, Barnes. He is also a beneficiary of the Eileen Rowe Musical Trust Award, granted to him by Professor Vanessa Latarche, Head of Keyboard at the Royal College of Music.

Noah currently studies under Professor Hilary Coates and Professor Christopher Elton, and he attained his DipABRSM Piano Diploma in 2013. He has participated in masterclasses across the world, including most notably the Internationale Sommerakademie at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, as well as classes with distinguished professors such as Leonel Morales, Andreas Weber, Pavel Gililov, Barbara Szczepanska and Andreas Froehlich.

In 2015, Noah competed in the Second International Piano Festival in San Giovanni Teatino, Italy, where he won third prize. As a soloist, he has performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9, ‘Jeunnehomme’, and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Conerto No. 2. He also has experience in orchestral piano, having performed Manuel de Falla’s El Sombrero de Tres Picos, Suite No. 3 at Birmingham Town Hall, as well as Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms at the Royal Festival Hall.

Noah made his public concerto debut in early 2018 with the Woking Symphony Orchestra under conductor Roy Stratford. He has also performed in notable venues such as Birmingham Symphony Hall, Steinway Hall, London, St. John’s Smith Square, and the Steingraeber Kammermusik-Saal in Bayreuth. After winning the RPS-Duet Prize, he participated in the Horowitz International Piano Competition 2019, in Kiev, where he won not only the third prize and bronze medal, but also the jury’s special prize for the best solo performance of a Ukrainian work. In the final round, he performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at Kiev Philharmonia Hall with the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, conducted by Vitaliy Protasov, and was featured on National Ukrainian Television. Furthermore, he was invited to perform live on the Ukrainian Radio Channel ‘Aristocrat’.

Noah has recently been awarded a full scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music, starting in September 2019.

(April 2019)