Famous Pianists

Scott Joplin

Joplin was an African-American composer and pianist. He has achieved his fame by his famous ragtime compositions, in fact, he was titled “The King of Ragtime.” He has written 44 original ragtime scores over his short career. Joplin was born in in Northeast Texas with a musical family of laborers. He developed his musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. He has formed a vocal quartet, and taught mandolin and guitar. At the late 1880s, he left his laborer with the railroad life and travelled around the American South as an itinerant musician.

Joplin was born into a musical family of laborers in Northeast Texas, and developed his musical knowledge with the help of local teachers, most notably Julius Weiss. Joplin grew up in Texarkana, where he formed a vocal quartet, and taught mandolin and guitar. During the late 1880s he left his job as a laborer with the railroad, and travelled around the American South as an itinerant musician. He went to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897. Joplin’s skills as a piano player were described in glowing terms by a Sedalia newspaper in 1898, and other ragtime composers said that Scott played the piano well. But the son of the publisher said that Joplin was of a mediocre level and he composed on paper, not on the piano. There are no recordings of Joplin’s playing, all his scores were preserved on seven piano rolls that then were played by a mechanical piano.

Krystian Beirnstein

Krystian Zimerman was born n December 5th, 1956, is a Polish classical pianist who has been hailed as one of the finest living pianists. Zimerman studied at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice under Andrzej Jasiński. He first started in 1975 when he won Warsaw International Chopin Piano Competition. He tours widely and made many albums. Zimerman has been teaching the piano at the Academy of Music in Basel since 1996 in Switzerland where he lives with his wife and 2 children. Krystian vowed, on April the 26th of 2009, to the audience at Los Angeles's Walt Disney Concert Hall that he is completely against the placement of a missile defense shield in Poland. He stated that he will not return to the United States of America until George W. Bush is out of office. Another part of his disenchantment with the US is their increase security at their airports, where more than once, his Steinway pianos were completely destroyed or damaged by security because of the smell of the glue used to glue the piano. Zimerman is an expert piano builder, and ever since these incidents, he decided to travel with unassembled piano pieces which he would put together after landing and going through security.