Short Bio

Belgian-born pianist and conductor Kevin Class has built an international career spanning solo performance, opera and orchestral conducting, recording, and the training of emerging professional musicians. Equally at home at the piano and on the podium, he has performed and worked throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, with appearances at venues and institutions including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Musikverein, New York’s Carnegie Hall, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.

A student of pianists including György Sebők and Murray Perahia, Class was named a Fellow of the Flemish Community by the Belgian government in recognition of his performances and advocacy for contemporary music. His discography includes more than fifteen commercial recordings, from concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, and Schumann to Liszt’s complete Années de pèlerinage and Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata. Fanfare has called his playing “exceptionally refined,” while Murray Perahia described him as “a pianistic poet who serves a deeply musical sensibility.”

Class has worked for more than three decades as an opera and orchestral conductor, with a repertoire encompassing more than seventy operas. His conducting activities have included work with La Monnaie, the Royal Opera House and National Opera Studio in London, Shanghai Opera, Seoul Opera, Opera Illinois, and the Arezzo Opera Festival. Since 2018, he has conducted for Berlin Opera Academy, including several seasons with its sister program, Saluzzo Opera Academy in Italy. His orchestral work has taken him throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, and in 2009 he conducted the inaugural orchestral concert of Chongqing’s landmark Grand Theatre in China.

A passionate mentor of young professional musicians, Class has trained conductors who have subsequently appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Opera House, Opéra national de Paris, and Lyric Opera of Chicago. For nearly two decades, he has also maintained extensive artistic and educational relationships throughout Asia, regularly returning to South Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia for performances, residencies, masterclasses, and orchestral projects.

Class’s career reflects an uncommon breadth of musical experience: pianist and conductor, soloist and collaborator, opera musician and orchestral trainer, recording artist and mentor, united by a lifelong fascination with the possibilities of musical performance.