Valentina Lisitsa

Ukrainian-born, American classical pianist, born December 11, 1973 in Kyiv of Polish-Russian descent. She now resides in North Carolina, US. She attended the Kyiv Secondary Specialized Music School, and later, together with her future husband, Oleksiy Kuznetsov, she studied with Lyudmila Tsvirko at the Kyiv Conservatory. In 1984, in a duet with violinist Tatyana Polyachok. She won the Concertino Prague Youth Competition. In 1991, Lisitsa and Kuznetsov won first prize at the prestigious international piano duet competition "Dranoff International Two Piano Competition", which allowed them to move to the United States to continue their careers as concert pianists and in 1995 to debut at the New York festival "Mostly Mozart Festival" at Lincoln Center. The most important collaboration, according to the pianist herself, was a duet with the American violinist Hilary Hahn. Lysitsa's popularity among the public is evidenced by performances in such halls as Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall (New York, USA), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam, Netherlands) and the Great Concert Hall of the Vienna Musical Society (Wiener Musikverein).