What is ABF?
The Alexander & Buono Foundation (ABF) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation established in 2008 with a mission is to identify the world’s most promising classical musicians and help them launch and sustain careers, while developing new audiences who understand, value, and appreciate classical music.
With more than half a century of performance, marketing, and publicity experience as the bedrock for their work, Chairmen Barry Alexander and Cosmo Buono fully understand the issues associated with enjoying success in classical music, and are therefore able to offer counsel, expertise, and result-oriented guidance.
Whether through performance, music education, or an array of associated professions, the goal remains simplifying the process by which classical musicians establish fulfilling careers.
Our Focus
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.
Achievements
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Pianist Jan Lisiecki went on to sign a five-CD contract with Deutsche Grammophon after winning the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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.