At ABF we have always believed that truly great careers are built with consistent effort applied over time.
To that end we have selected some of the most promising artists who have won The Alexander & Buono Competitions for Piano, Voice, Strings and Flute, in order to provide them with greater visibility and awareness of their talent and careers.
Our next projects involve concerts for Nana Miyoshi, and Anna Shelest. The ABF 2025-2026 concert season will feature Ms. Miyoshi in her Carnegie Hall solo recital debut on May 3, 2026, and Ms. Shelest in performance with the Brandywine Symphony Orchestra both in Pennsylvania and New York.
We invite you to follow us on social media and on our website in order to learn more about these splendid artists. We also ask that you consider making a donation to the Alexander & Buono Foundation in order to help us continue our work on behalf of these and other wonderful classical musicians.
-
Pianist Jan Lisiecki went on to sign a five-CD contract with Deutsche Grammophon after winning the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition.
-
Pianist Anna Shelest made debuts at Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls with orchestra, and her Kennedy Center debut, all in less than a year, while also receiving a recording contract with Sorel Classics after her B & B win.
-
Following his B & B win Rupert Egerton-Smith was named Artist-in-Residence of Oxfordshire’s Orchestra of St John’s, and performed for Her Majesty Queen Camilla. Owing to these and other accomplishments he was named a Steinway Artist in March 2025.
-
Pianists Umi Garrett, George Ko, Arianna Körting, Thomas Nickell, and Andrew Vargas, all Foundation grant recipients, went on to become Young Steinway Artists, a distinction held by less than 130 pianists worldwide.
Below are just a few examples of hundreds of artists enjoying success today as a result
of their ABC wins, ABF grants, and our ongoing career development counseling:
Achievements
Our Featured Artists
The Alexander & Buono Foundation is pleased to announce the list of artists currently receiving our ongoing support. We believe careers are built with consistent effort applied over time, so we have selected laureates from our previous competitions demonstrating the desire, talent, and promise needed to ensure they are capable of sustaining professional careers.
We ask that you contribute generously and often to our work on their behalf.
Nana Miyoshi recently made her
Carnegie Hall solo recital debut
on May 3, 2026.
Ever since she was three years old she has lived life with one single goal: to become a concert pianist. Now, at age eighteen, it is a dream she is working every day to turn into a reality.
From the very beginning her commitment has been absolute. Playing and studying in her native Japan since the age of three,
she applied to the Bradshaw & Buono
International Piano Competition in 2019, winning First Prize at age eleven. She has been a student of Steinway Artist Cosmo Buono since that time, and continues to
hone her technique, while building the vast repertoire of piano literature which she knows she will need in order to take her place on the world stage.
She listens and absorbs not just what
she learns in her lessons, but also from the world around her. Everything she sees, every mile she travels, even what she eats is an experience helping her becoming a better musician.
She already knows that it can take many years to become an overnight success, and that in order to achieve her dreams she is going to have to be consistent.
Daily practice at the piano; a vast historical knowledge of composers and their works; an understanding of their influences and motivations—all inform her studies on a constant basis, with the road to career success being traveled one experience and one note at a time.
Hailed by The New York Times as
a pianist of “a fiery sensibility and
warm touch,” Anna Shelest is an
international award-winning artist
who has thrilled audiences
throughout the world.
A champion of esoteric repertoire,
since 2017 she has been collaborating
with the legendary conductor Neeme
Järvi to record rare works for piano
and orchestra. Their complete set of
Anton Rubinstein’s piano concerti
has been released to great acclaim,
praised by the American Record Guide
as “Easily the top choices now for
these two concertos [Nos. #1 & #2]”
and Gramophone for “power and agility, effortless effect, nuanced and incisive all round [#4 and Caprice Russe].
The 2019 release ofDonna Voce, a
survey of music by women composers
from the last three centuries, has become Anna’s ongoing musical project that includes live performances, lectures and
videos, as well as a sequel albums-
Donna Voce II featuring Fanny
Mendelssohn’s monumental piano
cycle Das Jahr (“The Year”) and
Donna Voce III: Concerti.
The husband-and-wife team of Dmitri
and Anna Shelest, known as the Shelest Piano Duo, began musical training in their native Ukraine. Praised by Fanfare Magazine for their “stirring performances of rare repertory,” they made their
Carnegie Hall debut under the auspices of the Alexander & Buono Foundation in February of 2018, with their CD release of Ukrainian Rhapsody bringing renewed
attention to the music of their homeland.
The CD was also named Album of the
Week and played on radio stations
nationwide.
Their inventive programs have brought them everywhere from concert stages to state functions, prompting former
Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon to say they “realized diplomacy through music.”
A growing interest in the works of
women composers has led to recordings of a series of CDs entitled Donna Voce(The Voices of Women), Sorel Classics, available on amazon.com), the third of
which features collaborations with
Maestro Neeme Järvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra of Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto. Also included are Cécile Chaminade’s Concertstück, and a suite of piano four hands music with Dmitri and Anna at the keyboard.