Biography
Jan Schulmeister (*2006) has been playing the piano since the age of five. At his home Elementary Art School in Kroměříž he was a student of Eva Zonová, from September 2020 he started studying at the P.J.Vejvanovský Conservatory in Kroměříž in his mother's piano class.
In addition, he is gaining experience in master courses under the guidance of prominent Czech and foreign pedagogues, especially collaborating with prof. Alena Vlasáková (Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno) and prof. Ewou Kupiec (Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien, Hannover, Germany).
He has regularly been attending national and international piano competitions since the age of seven, in these competitions he has achieved remarkable achievements – he won first prizes or absolute victories at prestigious competitions such as César Franck Piano Competition (Brusel), Piano Talents (Milano), Virtuosi per musica di pianoforte (Ústí nad Labem), Amadeus (Brno), Broumov key, Beethovenovy Teplice or Pro Bohemia (Ostrava). He won many additional special prizes in many of these competitions.
Jan is also a double finalist in the solo category of the Concertino Praga International Radio Competition in 2020, where he won the Honorable Mention 1st degree together with the 1st prize of the European Union of Music Competitions for Youth (EMCY) and in 2021, when he demonstrated his artistic growth by winning 2 prizes, audience prizes and prizes for the best Czech participant.
He also became a finalist of the Concertino Praga International Radio Competition in 2023, this time in the chamber music category. Together with violinist Daniel Matejča, they completely dominated this category and became not only 1st prize holders, but also won the Audience Award, the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation Award for the best interpretation of the composer's work, and the Viktor Kalabis and Zuzana Růžičková Foundation Award for the best interpretation of the 20th or 21st composition .century.
However, his greatest achievement is the 3rd prize from one of the world's most prestigious piano competitions, "The Cliburn International Piano Competition", which took place in June 2023 in Dallas, USA.
Thanks to his competition successes, he has the opportunity to work with orchestras and important conductors. As the absolute winner of the Amadeus international competition, he got the opportunity to perform with the Brno Philharmonic under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies in 2019. He also played under the baton of Tomáš Netopil with the Bohuslav Martinů Zlín Philharmonic in the project "Little Big Philharmonics" in 2019. With the Symphony Orchestra of the Czech Radio (SOČR) under the direction of Jiří Rožná and Vahan Mardirossian, he performed as part of the already mentioned final evenings in the Concertino Praga competition in the Dvořák Hall Rudolfina in 2020 and 2021. He also performed with the North Bohemian Philharmonic Teplice under the direction of Petr Vronský in 2021. He also collaborated with the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava in 2023, the Prague Chamber Orchestra in 2020and the "Barocco semper giovane" Chamber Orchestra in 2020.
In the field of chamber music, he regularly performs with the Wihan Quartet. With this ensemble, among other things, he was invited to the Má vlast concert series, organized by Václav Hudeček and broadcast by TV Noe in 2018. In the same year, he became the youngest member of the PETROF Art Family association. He is a scholarship holder of the Komárek Family Foundation, in the 2018/2019 season he also participated in the MenArt scholarship program, organized by the Magdalena Kožená Foundation.
Apart from these activities he regularly performs solo concerts on both Czech and foreign stages (Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy, Austria nad North Macedonia). He also accepted invitations to perform at important national and international music festivals -The Dvořák Prague Festival, Prague Spring, The Smetana Litomyšl, Svátky hudby, The Chopin Festival in Marianské Lázně, Music in the Gardens and Castle in Kroměříž.
Despite his young age, he has extensive recording experience. He already has 4 CDs for PETROF and ArcoDiva, which chart his artistic development.