John Kersey is the winner of many international awards for his work in music and is particularly known for his pioneering work in researching and bringing unknown nineteenth-century piano music to a wider public through concerts and recordings. He is author of a major series of première recordings called “Romantic Discoveries”, consisting of over sixty nineteenth-century works which are available on CD via his website. He has given the British concert and recorded premières of works by Alkan and S.S. Wesley, among others, and his work has been featured on American and Dutch radio.
In 2002, he was the first individual British winner of the Medal of Honour for Science and Art of the Austrian Albert Schweitzer Society, one of the most prestigious of European cultural prizes, which counts among its past recipients the distinguished American composer Richard Nanes. In the same year, John Kersey became the first non-German to win the Friedrich Silcher Medal in Bronze of the Friedrich Silcher Vocalists' Foundation, Hessen, Germany. He has received several international chivalric honours, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. He has been awarded honorary fellowships from music colleges and societies of musicians in the UK, as well as several honorary doctorates from universities around the world.
His professional Purcell Room début at the age of seventeen led to invitations to give concerts in both the UK and continental Europe, and he has since performed not only as piano soloist and collaborative artist, but also as an organist and continuo harpsichordist. His current performing schedule includes both solo recitals in the UK and a series of concerts with the mezzo-soprano Sarah Tyler. In June 2005, the duo gave the public première of Jonathan Dove’s new song-cycle “All the Future Days” to poems by Ursula Vaughan Williams, and several more performances of the work are planned for the coming season.
John Kersey graduated with a dozen prizes as the top pianist of his year from the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Yu Chun-Yee and was later elected a Junior Fellow. As well as his work as a performer, he is also active as a music critic and educational consultant. For more information, please visit his website at www.johnkersey.org