ABF Artists
Please support our 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 select laureates from our 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.
Ever since she was three years old Nana Miyoshi has lived life with one single goal: to become a concert pianist. Now, at age seventeen, 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, before applying to the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition in 2019 and 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 of Donna 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.
Shelest Piano Duo
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 was released last month, featuring 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.