Born in 1983, Ishay Shaer is one of the leading young Israeli pianists. He has performed in numerous concerts throughout the world and has won both national and international prizes.
Among other venues, he has given recitals and concerto performances at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room in London, St. George's Bristol and Cheltenham Town Hall, UK; Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, Poland; Preston Bradley Hall in Chicago and Round Top Festival Institute in Texas, USA; Teatro Solis, Uruguay. His performances include broadcasts in radio stations in the USA, Scotland, Spain, South Africa and Israel, as well as concerts for the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series, "Semanas Musicales" de Frutillar, Swansea Festival of Music and Arts and "Kol Hamusica in the Upper Galilee" Festival. He has also performed with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and with some of the major Israeli orchestras. In April 2011 he was called on a two days notice to replace Fazil Say with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and performed in six subsequent concerts of the orchestra's subscription series, four of them at the 2700-seat Mann Auditorium.
In 2006, Ishay Shaer won the first prize in the Newport International Competition in the UK, and a year later was awarded third prize in the "Silvio Bengalli" International Piano Competition in Italy. During 2008 he won three national competitions, among them the prestigious Clairmont prize. In 2009 he was a prizewinner at the International Beethoven Competition in Bonn, and performed with the renowned cellist Mischa Maisky. Consequently, Shaer was invited for performances in Europe, which included a recital in Germany that was praised by the press: "[He] treats the composer's allusions by "reading" both the musical and the literary texts: Asking questions, providing answers, leading dialogues, meditating, narrating or being impulsively enthusiastic. Ideas that seem as though they develop at the very moment give his interpretation of the piece a persuasive originality".
Mr. Shaer is a recipient of America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarships with distinction. He began piano studies at the age of 7 with Mrs. Hanna Barsilai and later studied with Dr. Asaf Zohar. He has studied in the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music of Tel Aviv University (in cooperation with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) with Prof. Tomer Lev and thereafter with Prof. Arie Vardi, and finished his Bachelor's degree with distinction. Concurrently, he took part in master-classes with renowned artists, such as Murray Perahia, Matti Raekallio and Pnina Salzman.
His acclaimed CD (with Chopin's third sonata, Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit and Schumann Etudes Symphoniques) has been broadcast, since its release in 2008, in the major Israeli radio stations, and was recommended by Noam Ben-Zeev, the music critic of "Haaretz" newspaper. The CD was also broadcast in American radio stations, where it was described by the Texas Public Radio as "Great music preformed by a great pianist that you do not want to miss".
Ishay Shaer's upcoming concerts include concerto performances with Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne at grand hall of the Tonhalle Zurich and with the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt in Germany. In addition, he will perform solo recitals and chamber music concerts in Spain (Teatro Echegaray de Málaga), Peru (Sociedad Filarmónica de Lima), Puerto Rico (Fiesta Iberoamericana de las Artes), Chile (with violinist Sivan Maayani Zelikoff) and Greece (with the New Hellenic Quartet, at the Thessaloniki Concert Hall).