Lewis Eady National Junior Piano Competition 2023

The Lewis Eady National Junior Piano Competition is the younger sister of the Lewis Eady National Piano Competition and it’s held every two years ... although as you can imagine, the Covid pandemic messed things up with the timings over the last few years.

The competition is open to full-time secondary school students and from a batch of video auditions, sixteen pianists were invited to perform here Auckland in the semifinals and then from these, six were chosen to play in this Grand Final. They are all in their early teens.

On the adjudicating panel we have the Italian-American pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi who was the winner of the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 1999. As well as maintaining a performing career, he is head of the Piano Department at the Cleveland Institute of Music and is active on the boards of piano competitions, piano foundations and music festivals. Busy man.

Also adjudicating are New Zealand pianist Read Gainsford, currently the Professor of Piano at Florida State University; and Natalia Ricci – an esteemed teacher from the Sydney Conservatorium.

Ozan Biner-McGrath

Ozan Biner-McGrath is a 14-year old student at Logan Park High School in Dunedin. He started his piano lessons at a young age with John Colwill and his father Tom McGrath and has had further instruction from Jian Liu and Terence Dennis.

Luke Ding

Luke Yuyang Ding is from Auckland, where he's in Year 11 at Westlake Boys’ High School at the time of the competition.

William Ding

13-year old William Ding studies piano with Jian Liu.

Ryan Gu

15-year old Ryan Gu is from Christchurch. Ryan is at Christ’s College and currently studies piano with Michael Endres.

Leo Liu

Leo Zhao Xuan Liu is a Year 9 student at ACG Parnell College. He currently studies with Bryan Sayer and Jian Liu. He’s got some competition success under his belt already – he was awarded 1st prize at the 2022 Singapore International Piano Competition.

Shan Liu

Shan Liu is 13 years old. He was one of the finalists in the previous Junior Piano Competition in 2020 where he was pretty impressive indeed as a 10-year old.

He’s a Year 9 student at Westlake Boys High School and he studies piano with Stephen De Pledge. His list of achievements so far reads almost as if he’s a professional pianist already – several firsts at international competitions and performances with the NZSO and at Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House.

The adjudicators awarded first place to Shan Liu. 2nd went to Ryan Gu and 3rd to Luke Ding.

The special prizes – Ryan Gu received the award for the best performance of a classical sonata and Luke Ding the one for best performance of a New Zealand work: his own composition called ‘Cumulonimbus’.

Shan Liu speaks to Bryan Crump after his win.