Kei Solvang

​An audience favourite on piano.

Kei Solvang was born in 2002 and could hardly reach the pedals when she started playing the piano as a three-year-old in Japan.

She continued to practice when the family moved to Norway and has gathered a considerable collection of awards and coveted performances. She won her class in the Norwegian youth music competition, Ungdommens musikkmesterskap, in 2018, as well as the inspiration and audience awards. She has excelled in piano competitions in Sweden, UK and Germany and opened NRK's grand venture Grieg minute by minute. She has performed several concerts at the composer's home, Troldhaugen, in Bergen.

When, as a 14-year-old, she performed during the Festival youth performance at the Bergen International Festival, she was interviewed on TV together with piano mentor Leif Ove Andsnes. Then, she revealed that she wanted to become a professional musician, and so the course was set. Between 2019 and 2022 she was a member of Prof. Jiri Hlinka Piano Academy, also with Håvard Gimse and Christian Ihle Hadland as main mentors. Today, she studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

During this year's Festival, she will perform two free concerts at Festallmenningen with works by Grieg, Beethoven and others. You can also experience her as a soloist during the portrait concert in Håkonshallen of this year's Festival composer, Anne-Marie Ørbeck.