Spanish/Dutch pianist Albert Cano Smit won First Prize at the 2019 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, as well as The Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize, the Alexander Kasza-Kasser Concert Prize for support of his Kennedy Center debut, the Friends of Music Concert Prize (NY), and the Sunday Musicale Prize (NJ). He also won First Prize at the 2017 Walter W. Naumburg Piano Competition, which presented him in recital at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall.

This season, Mr. Cano Smit performs the Brahms Concerto No. 2 with the Las Vegas Philharmonic conducted by Donato Cabrera, and debuts with the Seattle Symphony, Boca del Río Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfònica de Barcelona and Glacier Symphony. He has also appeared with the San Diego Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Manchester Camerata, Nottingham Youth Orchestra, and American Youth Symphony.

Albert Cano Smit has given solo recitals at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, for the Steinway Society The Bay Area in San Jose, New York’s Salon de Virtuosi, and Bravo! Vail Festival, and has been in residency at the Tippet Rise Art Center. He has given recitals abroad in Xiamen, China, in France at the Wissembourg Festival and Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, at Germany’s Rheingau Music Festival, and throughout Spain. Mr. Cano Smit tours with violinist William Hagen in venues throughout the U.S. and in Germany, and with flutist Anthony Trionfo he has performed in New York at Merkin Concert Hall and the Morgan Library & Museum, and at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater in Washington, DC.

Mr. Cano Smit currently studies with Robert McDonald at The Juilliard School. Previous teachers include Ory Shihor, Graham Caskie and Marta Karbownicka. He has benefited from extensive artistic advice by YCA alumni Richard Goode and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, with whom he gave four-hand performances at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles and Wallis Annenberg Center Hall in Beverly Hills. Mr. Cano Smit is an alumnus of the Verbier Festival Academy. He thanks the Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation for their generosity.