Ian Munro (pianist)

Ian Munro (born 1963) is an Australian pianist, composer, writer and music educator. His career has taken him to over 30 countries in Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.

Ian Munro was born in Melbourne in 1963, and attended Scotch College (1975–80) and the Victorian College of the Arts (1981–83). His early piano training was in Melbourne with Rodney Hurst, Marta Rostas (a pupil of Béla Bartók), Deirdre Vadas and Roy Shepherd (a pupil of Alfred Cortot) and he had further study in Vienna, London and Italy with Franz Zettl, Noretta Conci, Guido Agosti and Michele Campanella.

While studying at the Victorian College of the Arts, he won the ABC Instrumental and Vocal Competition (now the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards) in 1982. He won major prizes at the 1985 Maria Canals International Music Competition, the 1987 Leeds International Piano Competition, the 1987 Vianna da Motta International Music Competition and the 1987 Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Italy.

His solo repertoire includes both rare and unusual works of the 19th and 20th centuries (such as those by his compatriots Katharine Parker,Ernest Hutcheson and Arthur Benjamin) and he also has a special interest in new music. He has premiered or commissioned works by Peter Sculthorpe, Elena Kats-Chernin (her second piano concerto),Roger Smalley, John Woolrich, Andrew Ford (The Waltz Book, a series of 60 waltzes lasting one minute each),Gordon Kerry,Ann Ghandar, Raffaele Marcellino, Ross Edwards and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, from whom he commissioned the piano cycle Silhouettes. These pieces were dedicated to significant 20th-century composers such as Debussy, Gershwin, Ives, Ravel, Schnittke, Stravinsky – and John Cage, which in true Cage style consisted of 33 seconds of silence.

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