Tamami Honma
Pianist Tamami Honma has received wide acclaim for her original and insightful interpretations and her powerful performances. She maintains a busy schedule as a concert soloist, collaborative performer, conductor, teacher and recording artist. Her recordings of the complete 35 Beethoven Sonatas released in 2024, have received glowing reviews: “The strengths of Honma’s interpretations of the earlier works persist to the end, whether in the lyrical warmth of Op 90’s finale or the stratospheric heights of the final three.” (International Piano) “... the “Funeral March” Op. 26 and “Moonlight” Op. 27 No. 2 contain some of the most inspired and dramatically contrasted pianism in Honma’s cycle” (Classics Today)
Before studying with Byron Janis (one of the very few students of Vladimir Horowitz) she was a recipient of grand and first prizes in many national and international competitions. Janis was her formative teacher at the Manhattan School of Music where she gained her Bachelor’s in piano performance before she moved to London to continue studies with Christopher Elton at the Royal Academy of Music. Upon receiving her Master’s Degree there, she joined the academic faculty where she was later awarded an honorary ARAM degree.
Composers including Anatolijus Senderovas, Sadie Harrison, John McCabe and Osvaldas Balauskas have composed works for her which she premiered at Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall to great acclaim. She gave the world premiere of the Piano Concerto written for her by Luis Andrei Cobo. The performance with the Cambrian Symphony was voted as ‘Best of the Bay’ by SF Classical Voice and has to date performed over thirty piano concertos with orchestras including the concerto by Ferruccio Busoni which is the largest of this genre ever written for any instrument and has only been performed by a handful of times since it was written in 1904.
Besides her work as a performer and recording artist, Ms Honma serves as Music Faculty Lecturer at Stanford University. She also maintains a busy private studio with award winning students and is founder/director of the Cal Arte Ensemble and Chamber Orchestra.