Rufus Choi, 2024 Simon-Fiset Piano adjudicator

Rufus Choi, Korean-American pianist, finds the world his stage and the concert hall platform his home in performances to sold-out houses, where critics and audiences acclaim his artistry as musician and keyboard wizard. New York venues include Lincoln Center and Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall, and in other parts of the international music scene.

Mr.Choi has been highly visible in performances at the Salzburg Festival, Herrenhausen Gardens, Great Hall at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, National Hall in Taipei, Sejong Hall, Seoul Arts Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and Pasadena Ambassador Auditorium, to name a few. Appearances also include a sensational and sold out Los Angeles solo recital in Zipper Hall at the Colburn School and enthusiastically received performances in South Korea at the Busan Cultural Center and the Hoam Art Hall in Seoul.

Mr.Choi won First Place ($50,000) and People’s Choice ($10,000) prize winner in the inaugural Jose Iturbi International Music Competition in 2007, and has received top prizes in numerous other international piano competitions. In addition to his passion for performing, Mr. Choi has a deep desire to share the beauty of music with dedicated students to understand its benefits, such as enhanced awareness, understanding universal laws, and clarity of the human expression.

Since returning to Los Angeles in 2007, he has had the privilege of teaching and working with talented pianists of all ages, a number of whom have gone on to study at renown conservatories such as The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory of Music, and Manhattan School of Music, in addition to winning top prizes in national and international piano competitions such as the e-Piano Junior Competition, Gina Bachauer Junior Competition, National Chopin Competition of the United States, Arthur Fraser International Piano Competition, MTNA national competition, MTAC state competition, and numerous others. 

In 2023, Mr.Choi founded the Salit Conservatory of Music, in Burbank, California, to further and expand his platform to inspire and teach pianists to “listen between the notes.”  Mr.Choi is a Steinway Artist, a graduate of the Juilliard School (BM, MM), where he studied with Oxana Yablonskaya, and earned a Soloklassen Diplom, which is the highest degree attainable, at the Musik Hochschule in Hannover, Germany, with Vladimir Krainev.