Evren Ozel
Evren Ozel (born 13 February 1999) is an American classical pianist. He has garnered accolades that include the Bronze Medal at the Seventeenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and began an international career around several continents, performing with many big orchestras.[1]
Early life and career
Ozel was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1999, and began piano lessons at the MacPhail Center for Music when he was 3.[2] At the age of 11, he made his concert debut with the Minnesota Orchestra, and soon played with major orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, and Boston Pops. For high school, he was accepted into the Walnut Hill School for the Arts[3] under Wha Kyung Byun, where he began attending the pre-college attached to the New England Conservatory. He also attended summers at the Oxford Philomusica Piano Festival, International Mendelssohn Akademie Leipzig, and Marlboro Music Festival, where he spent 4 summers.[4]
While at Walnut Hill, he won the 2016 Boston Symphony Concerto Competition and second prizes at the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition and Dublin International Piano Competition.[5] He was a semi-finalist for the Cleveland Piano Competition for Young Artists.[6] In high school, he was featured 3 times on NPR's From the Top,[5] and received scholarships from the United States Chopin Foundation and the YoungArts Foundation. His mentors have included Andras Schiff, Lang Lang,Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, and Paul Lewis, and he also studied conducting with Courtney Lewis.
Ozel won the 2022 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, the Concert Artists Guild 2021 Competition, and in 2023, Ozel received an Avery Fisher Career Grant.[7] He was soon appointed a Bowers Program Artist at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center,[8] and made his debut, an album of Mozart Concertos, in 2025. The album, featuring the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Howard Griffiths, was released on Alpha Classics.[8] Other artists he has worked with include conductors Marin Alsop, Carlos Miguel Prieto , Ruth Reinhardt, and Hugh Wolff; and chamber music with David Finckel, Jonathan Biss, Wu Han, Stella Chen, Geneva Lewis, Kim Kashkashian, and Marcy Rosen.
In 2025, he won the Bronze Medal at the Seventeenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, as well as the special prize for the Best Performance of a Mozart Concerto.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Evren Ozel | The Cliburn". cliburn.org. Retrieved 2026-05-18.
- ↑ "Evren Ozel". Chopin Foundation of the United States. Retrieved 2026-05-18.
- ↑ "Evren Ozel". Chopin Foundation of the United States. Retrieved 2026-05-18.
- ↑ [email protected] (2022-08-29). "Evren Ozel, piano - Classical Music Chicago". https://classicalmusicchicago.org/. Retrieved 2026-05-18. External link in
|website=(help) - ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Evren Ozel". From the Top. Retrieved 2026-05-18.
- ↑ "Evren Ozel – Piano Cleveland". pianocleveland.org. Retrieved 2026-05-18.
- ↑ "Evren Ozel, piano". Washington Performing Arts. Retrieved 2026-05-18.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Evren Ozel - Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center". www.chambermusicsociety.org. Retrieved 2026-05-18.
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