İzem Gürer

İzem Gürer was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and began her piano education at the age of eight with concert pianist Birsen Ulucan. A prizewinner in numerous national and international piano competitions, she won first prize at the "Pianisti të rinj" International Piano Competition in Kosovo at the age of twelve — together with the prize for the best interpretation of a work by a Kosovar composer — and performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9 with the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra. She also won first prize at the Hacettepe National Piano Competition in Turkey and was a semi-finalist at the Épinal International Piano Competition in France.

In 2013, İzem was invited to study in the class of Prof. Dmitri Bashkirov, one of the world's leading virtuoso pianists, and was awarded a scholarship to the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía (Queen Sofía School of Music) in Madrid. In 2017 and 2018 she received the "Best Young Musician of the Year" award in the solo and chamber music categories, presented to her by Her Majesty Queen Sofía of Spain. In 2021 she completed her Bachelor's degree at the Reina Sofía School with a diploma of achievement, and in 2023 she completed her Master's degree in Piano Performance in the class of Prof. Zoltán Fejérvári at the Musik-Akademie Basel in Switzerland.

She has given numerous recitals and chamber music concerts on prestigious stages across Spain, Turkey, Austria, Greece, France, and England, and has worked in masterclasses with Menahem Pressler, Márta Gulyás, Nikolai Demidenko, Luis Fernando Pérez, Claudio Martínez Mehner, Eldar Nebolsin, Josep Colom, Rena Shereshevskaya, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Milana Chernyavska, Jerome Rose, Kathryn Stott, Stephen Kovacevich, Marios Papadopoulos, William Fong, and Vanessa Latarche.