Our 2022 winner, Shunta Morimoto, returns to Hastings for a black-tie recital at the Kino-Teatr in St Leonard’s including works by Bach, Schubert, Chopin and Schumann.

Shunta was born in 2004 in Kyoto, Japan. At the age of twelve, he won the prestigious First Prize of the Piano Teachers Association of Japan, as well as the Fukuda Scholarship Award, one of the most important prizes for a Japanese musician today.  He took part in the Van Cliburn Junior Competition in Dallas, Texas in May 2019 to much public acclaim  and has since gained a large global following of admirers, musicians and critics. He currently studies with Maestro William Grant Naboré at the world famous International Piano Academy-Lake Como. He has since been awarded the Yamaha Scholarship for his studies at Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, where he is enrolled in the class of Piano Accompaniment with Maestro Giovanni Velluti.

He won the 2022 Hastings competition with a performance of the Schumann concerto. Says Shunta: “Winning Hastings International Piano Concerto Competition has made an enormous change in the direction and meaning of my vocation as a performing artist and human being.”