Piano prodigy’s performance set to showcase ‘exceptional’ talent in Bunbury

An award-winning piano prodigy will travel to Bunbury to showcase his talent next month Jeonghwan Kim gained attention for his talent in his childhood, winning competitions from as young as six years old and excelling at his craft, studying at the most sought-after schools to hone his talent. The 24-year-old was born in South Korea and moved to Berlin when he was 11 to further his studies. He is scheduled to perform at the Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre stage. Piano+ chief executive Marcus Barker said Kim won the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2023 “with ease”, highlighting his talent. “It takes an exceptional young musician to win such a prestigious competition as the Sydney International is,” he said. “He was selected from 280 applications that we received from around the world. From there, he was shortlisted to be just one of 32 that was invited to come to Sydney to be part of the competition last year.” Barker said Kim’s “adept finger work” and “maturing capacity” as a performer were “tantalising” to listen to. His talent and background “speaks for itself” and his repertoire includes Beethoven and Bartok, Barker said. “He did win the competition playing Bartok’s piano concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, which is very rarely performed given the complexity and the very difficult work in itself — not just for the pianist, but also for the orchestra,” he said. “We’ve brought our artists to Bunbury for many, many years, and the audiences there continue to actively engage with those artists and grow as well, which is really exciting. “It’s a priority for us at Piano+ to bring emerging and young artists, like Kim, to regional parts of the country, and I’m really happy that we have an ongoing partnership with Bunbury. “Jeonghwan has a glittering career ahead of him, with his natural ability as a pianist, also the hard work that he’s put into creating himself and honing his craft as a pianist.” Jeonghwan Kim’s piano recital will feature at BREC on Thursday, October 3.