Naida Cole

The glamorous Naida Cole quickly established a career as one of Canada's leading pianists at an unusually young age. Her parents noted her remarkable sensitivity to music while she was still in the crib. Often as a baby, Cole could only be soothed to sleep when she was crying by the playing of a Beethoven symphony on the stereo. She began playing the violin at age three, and before she was five, started on piano. In 1970, her family moved to Saudi Arabia. There, the family could not find a suitable piano teacher, so Cole started serious study of the flute. She continued practicing these instruments, finding it not a chore but an opportunity, to let out her emotions on whichever instrument she chose. When the family returned to Canada, Cole entered the Royal Conservatory of Music's Associate Diploma program in 1984. She graduated from it, with first-class honors, at the age of 13. Only one other person has ever graduated at a younger age, the late, legendary Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. She studied for a year, as an undergraduate, at the Université de Montréal, then attended the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, U.S.A.. She earned two bachelor of music degrees, one in flute (with her main teacher being Robert Willoughby) and one in piano (with Leon Fleisher). She became one of six pianists selected to go to Cadenabbia, Italy, to study at the Fondazione Internazionale per il Pianoforte. There, she had Fleisher, Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Dimitri Bashikirov, Fou T'song, and Charles Rosen as teachers. She returned to the Université de Montréal and obtained her master of music degree in 1998, studying with Marc Durand. After that, she began doctoral work at Yale University. She has entered and won prizes at several national and international music competitions. One of these was the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where she won the Phyllis Jones Tilley Award for the best performance of the commissioned work (William Bolcom's Nine Bagatelles), and the Stephen de Groote Memorial Chamber Music Performance Award. Her successes at the Cliburn competition brought her to wide attention in North America. This has led to appearances with the Munich Philharmonic, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada, under conductors Kazimierz Kord, Gunther Herbig, and Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Cole has appeared in a series of European concerts, with Gidon Kremer's ensemble Kremerata Baltica, and at his Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, as well as the Ottawa Chamber Music Festivals. Her U.S. debut as a soloist was at the Kennedy Center, and she has also played Carnegie Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Music Pavilion in Los Angeles, and Severance Hall in Cleveland. In 1999, she became the first Canadian classical artist ever to receive an exclusive contract with the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label. She has released her first disc, a recital of music of Fauré, Chabrier, and Ravel.
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