Kit Armstrong

Only 20 years old, Kit Armstrong’s concert diary contains solo appearances with the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the NDR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, the Bamberger Symphoniker, l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. He has collaborated with such conductors as Ivor Bolton, Riccardo Chailly, Thomas Dausgaard, Christoph von Dohnányi, Manfred Honeck, Sir Charles Mackerras, Bobby McFerrin, and Jonathan Nott. Orchestral tour projects during the 2011|2012 season are with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Robin Ticciati, as well as with Berlin’s Konzerthausorchester.

Chamber music is among of Kit Armstrong’s core interests, both as a pianist and a composer. He performs regularly with the Szymanowski String Quartet and in a trio with Andrej Bielow (violin) and Adrian Brendel (cello). During the 2011|2012 season, Kit Armstrong made his first appearance in a lied recital with Schubert’s Schwanengesang. Further highlights of the current season include recitals at Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle, the Philharmonie in Cologne and the Liederhalle in Stuttgart.

Kit Armstrong also is an accomplished composer who has written for a wide variety of ensembles. “Composing is the basis upon which I think about music”, says Armstrong (interview in Concerti magazine). His compositions include a quintet for piano and winds (premiered by members of the Concertgebouw Orchestra at the International Music Festival, The Hague) and a quintet for piano and strings. Among his commissions are a clarinet concerto for the Frankfurter Bachkonzerte (premiered at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt with Paul Meyer as soloist), a string quartet commissioned by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig in honour of Alfred Brendel’s 80th birthday (premiered by the Szymanowski String Quartet), and “Half of One, Six Dozen of the Other”, a solo piano composition for Till Fellner. Further works are “Time flies like an arrow”, a piano trio for the Klavierfestival Ruhr, and a solo piano fantasy on B-A-C-H for the Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker. His most recent commission is “Andante”, an orchestral overture that was premiered by the Musikkollegium Winterthur in March 2012.

Armstrong has received 5 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards from the ASCAP Foundation in New York, including the prestigious Charlotte V. Bergen award for “Struwwelpeter: Character Pieces for Viola and Piano”. The Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival honoured Armstrong with the 2010 Leonard Bernstein Award.

Following courses with Claude Frank at the Curtis Institute of Music, Armstrong moved to London for piano studies with Benjamin Kaplan, and graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2008. In recent years, Armstrong has derived inspiration from his mentor Alfred Brendel, who ascribes “an understanding of the great piano works that combines freshness and subtlety, emotion and intellect” to him.

Kit Armstrong began studying mathematics and science at university level at the age of 7. He has participated in MIT’s prestigious Research Science.

The artist's homepage:

https://kitcarmstrong.webs.com/index.html