One of the brightest young instrumental talents to emerge from Finland today, Juho Pohjonen has attracted great attention as one of the Nordic country's most intriguing and talented pianists. Widely praised for his interpretations of music from Bach to Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mr. Pohjonen's New York debut recital at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall in 2004 was selected as one of the most memorable concert events heard in New York during that year by Anthony Tommasini, senior music critic of The New York Times.

Last year, Juho Pohjonen was selected by András Schiff as the winner of the 2009 Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholarship. In addition, he has won numerous prizes in both Finnish and international competitions, including: First Prize at the 2004 Nordic Piano Competition in Nyborg, Denmark, First Prize at the International Young Artists 2000 Concerto Competition in Stockholm, the Prokofiev Prize at the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition 2003, and was a prize winner at Helsinki International Maj Lind Piano Competition 2002.

Mr. Pohjonen has given recitals in Dresden, Hamburg, Helsinki, London (Wigmore Hall), New York (Carnegie Hall), San Francisco, Vancouver, Alicante, Warsaw and at the Lucerne Piano, Savonlinna, Bergen and Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festivals. He has performed with orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, Danish National, Malmö, Finnish Radio Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Lahti Symphony -- with whom he toured Japan -- Bournemouth Symphony, Scottish Chamber and Philharmonia Orchestras.

Season highlights for 2010-2011 feature a number of important debuts, including Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the San Francisco Symphony and Marek Janowski, and Mozart's Quintet for Piano and Winds, Piano Concerto No. 12, and Serenade No. 10 ("Gran Partita") with Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra and Pinchas Zukerman. He will join the Tokyo Quartet performing Beethoven's Six Bagatelles for Piano at the 92nd Street Y, and, as part of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's ‘CMS Two Residency Program for Outstanding Young Artists', participates in a number of projects from 2009-2012, including a complete cycle of all Mozart's Piano Sonatas. In July 2010, Mr. Pohjonen was a last-minute recital replacement for pianist Jeffrey Kahane at the Music@Menlo festival, of which the Mercury News wrote: "The internal motion of the music - all its moving parts - were so cleanly delineated that it was like listening with the equivalent of 3-D glasses... an impressive and fearless performance." He returns to Menlo for multiple concerts in 2011. He will also give recitals at Rockefeller University in New York and the Gilmore Festival in Kalamazoo. European engagements will be the Philharmonia Orchestra and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra with Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra with conductor Hugh Wolff, and the Orquesta Sinfonica Castilla y Leon with Lionel Bringuier.

Mr. Pohjonen's studies began in 1989, when he entered the Junior Academy of the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. He has studied with Meri Louhos and Hui-Ying Liu at the Sibelius Academy, where he completed his Master's Degree in 2008. In addition, Mr. Pohjonen has participated in several master classes of world-class pianists such as András Schiff, Leon Fleisher, Jacob Lateiner and Barry Douglas.

‘If we needed proof that exciting new talent is in the pipeline, there was the marvellous American debut of Juho Pohjonen at [Carnegie's] Weill Recital Hall. Mr Pohjonen, offered a formidable mixed program, topped by thrilling accounts of two fiendishly difficult works by a fellow Finn, Esa-Pekka Salonen.'  The New York Times

AUGUST 2010-PLEASE DESTROY ALL PREVIOUSLY DATED MATERIALS