Kit Armstrong

Kit Armstrong distinguishes himself among pianists and composers through his ongoing commitment to both disciplines. He possesses a disused church in France that serves as the venue for his recitals and, throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the site of his daily video streams.

Born in Los Angeles on March 5, 1992, Armstrong displayed childhood leanings toward the sciences, mathematics, and languages while independently mastering the rudiments of composition by consulting encyclopedia entries. Although he started piano and composition lessons early, he maintained concurrent study of science and mathematics during his entire student period. He attended Christian schools in the Los Angeles region, supplementing his high-school work with physics courses at California State University at Long Beach and music-composition courses at Chapman University in Orange County. At Utah State University he pursued biology, physics, mathematics, and music before enrolling, at age eleven, at both the Curtis Institute of Music and the University of Pennsylvania. In 2004 he relocated to London, where he completed a bachelor’s degree at the Royal Academy of Music in 2008 while also taking mathematics classes at Imperial College; two years later he received a master’s degree in science from Marie Curie University in Paris. Private study with Alfred Brendel began in 2005.

He made his first public appearance at eight with the Long Beach Bach Festival Orchestra and has since performed as concerto soloist with leading ensembles across Europe, the United States, and Asia, among them the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Tokyo Symphony, and the Baltimore Symphony. Solo recitals have taken him throughout Europe and the United States, including a 2003 program at Carnegie Hall marking the 150th anniversary of Steinway & Sons. An enthusiastic chamber musician and vocal accompanist, Armstrong collaborates with the Szymanowski Quartet and singers Andreas Wolf, Thomas Bauer, and Christiane Karg. During the summer of 2018 he appeared as prizewinner-in-residence at Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, presenting twenty-four concerts. In 2012 he acquired the Church of Sainte-Thérèse-de-l’Enfant-Jésus in Hirson, France, where he continues to perform and from which he transmitted daily video broadcasts during the pandemic.

Armstrong’s catalog includes a symphony, five piano concertos, solo piano pieces, and assorted chamber works; these have been presented by leading groups such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, which gave the premiere of his fortepiano concerto in 2015. His scores appear under the Edition Peters imprint. Recordings have been issued on the Genuin, Sony Classical, and Deutsche Grammophon labels; his first release for the last of these, William Byrd, John Bull: Visionaries of Piano Music, was released in 2021.