BIOGRAPHY
Known for her expressivity, virtuosity, and versatility, Ines Irawati is in demand both as a solo recitalist and a collaborative pianist. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, she began piano and composition instruction at age six at the Yamaha Music School in Indonesia. At age 12, she made her official debut playing the third Beethoven Piano Concerto and Chopin's first concerto with the Indonesian Youth Symphony.
Irawati is currently enjoying a richly varied performance career, excelling in solo performance, chamber music, collaborative piano, and operatic vocal coaching. Her recent engagements include performances for TEDxSan Diego at Copley Symphony Hall, the Art of Élan, Musikamar chamber concerts, concerts in Centro Cultural Tijuana, and performances all over Southern California. She is a member of the piano trio, Aviara Trio, and the Hidden Valley Virtuosi, the resident chamber music group of Hidden Valley Music Seminars in Monterey. She has collaborated with many other esteemed chamber musicians such as violinist Cindy Wu, cellist Sophie Webber, double-bassist Jeremy Kurtz-Harris, Strings of the West, the Hyperion String Quartet, and members of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. Most recently, with singers Josh Arky and Alex Rodrick, Ms. Irawati is involved in La Cena è Pronta, a project which explores the nourishing ways of food and music enrich our lives through intimate vocal performances. Ms. Irawati recently served as the musical and artistic director of San Diego Opera Young Artist Training Program, where she directed the company’s outreach concert series, Opera Exposed!, and its production of Little Red Riding Hood, a children's opera by Seymour Barab. Since the summer of 2008, Ms. Irawati has been invited by renowned dramatic mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick to serve as a coach and vocal pianist at the prestigious Institute for Young Dramatic Voices. She was the vocal coach and collaborative piano faculty at Point Loma Nazarene University from 2004-2017. She is the founder of Musikamar, a music series which brings exquisite chamber music performances into smaller and intimate spaces.
"One of the most vital, imaginative, artistic young people on the scene..."
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​"Her way with lyricism was as vivid as her crisp definition of the scampering material...
without fear, negotiating the digital demands smoothly while remaining mindful of the score's rhythmic accents and nuances."
-Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer
Ms. Irawati was educated at and awarded full scholarship to the prestigious high school program, Young Artists Program at Cleveland Institute of Music, where she continued her studies throughout her undergraduate years. Her teachers and coaches include Olga Radosavljevich, Vivian Weilerstein, Anne Epperson, and Donald Weilerstein. Ms. Irawati holds a Master of Music degree from Yale University, where she studied with Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, and Kikuei Ikeda of the Tokyo String Quartet.
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Her education also includes a summer music festival at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, where she studied vocal accompanying with Warren Jones and Marilyn Horne. She was awarded Best Vocal Pianist by the Marilyn Horne Foundation, and was invited to give a New York debut at the Kosciuszko Foundation. She returned to the Academy as the recipient of the Fellowship Award for the 2005 Summer School and Music Festival. In January of 2006, Ms. Irawati was invited by the Marilyn Horne Foundation to participate in the weeklong musical event presented by The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall.
Ms. Irawati has also won numerous prizes from competitions internationally, including the Suburban Concerto Competition, the Cleveland Institute of Music Concerto Competition, the D'angelo International Young Artists Competition, and the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus Competition. She was also invited to perform Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra at Severance Hall.
As a performer and a composer, Irawati has performed her own compositions all over Indonesia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka. She was accepted to the Junior Original Concert, a prestigious music program where young musicians compose original works and perform them around the world. At the age of 15, she was invited to the International UNICEF Benefit in Japan, where she performed her concerto with the NHK Symphony Orchestra. Her composition teachers include Donald Erb and the late renowned Indonesian composer, Slamat Abdul Syukur. Her work for solo flute, “Flirting Belugas”, was published by the Manduca Music Publication.
Ms. Irawati currently lives in San Diego with her husband, their two children, and a yorkie named Larry