Multiple award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet regularly works with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Krzysztof Urbański, Daniele Gatti and Iván Fischer. Named “Artist of the Year” at the 2012 International Classical Music Awards, his recent highlights have included an appearance at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York with Louis Langrée, a BBC Prom with Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, repeats with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra, performances with the Orchestra National de Lyon, Tivoli Symphony Orchestra with Kirill Karabits, and the NHK Symphony and Kyoto Symphony orchestras in Japan.
This season Bavouzet will make his debuts with the San Francisco, Montreal, Dallas and New Jersey symphony orchestras (under Vasily Petrenko, Kent Nagano, Marc Albrecht and Susanna Mälkki respectively), and will play with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra (Zoltán Kocsis), Sydney Symphony (Vladimir Ashkenazy) and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (James Gaffigan), as well as the Pittsburgh and Seattle Symphony Orchestra, besides returning to the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra.
An equally active recitalist, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet regularly performs at London's Southbank Centre, Wigmore Hall and the Cheltenham Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron and Cité de la Musique, Brussels’ BOZAR and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. Recitals in the 2012/13 season include the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Sociedad Filarmónica de Bilbao, Casa da Música in Porto, the Moscow Conservatoire, and the Schwetzinger Festspiele.
Renowned for his recordings, Bavouzet has won Gramophone awards for concerto works by Debussy and Ravel with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Yan Pascal Tortelier, and for the fourth volume of Debussy's Complete Works for Piano. His interpretations of Debussy and Ravel have earned him two BBC Music Magazine awards and Diapason d'Or, whilst his first volume of Haydn's Piano Sonatas received a Choc de l’Année and his Bartók Piano Concertos disc (with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda) was short-listed for multiple international awards. Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos and current projects include a Beethoven piano sonata cycle. In 2012 Gramophone nominated Bavouzet one of their Artists of the Year.
A former student of Pierre Sancan at the Paris Conservatoire, Bavouzet was invited by Sir George Solti to make his debut with the Orchestre de Paris in 1995 and is widely considered the Maestro’s latest discovery. Alongside his performances, Bavouzet has also made a transcription for two pianos of Debussy’s Jeux, published by Durand with a foreword by Pierre Boulez. He won first prize in the International Beethoven Competition in Cologne and the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York in 1986.
Bavouzet is Artistic Director of the Lofoten Piano Festival in Norway.