Olga Paliy 

At the age when young children dream about what they want to be, Olga Paliy never thought of not being a musician. In her final school year, at the age of 14, she gave two personal recitals in the same week: one as a pianist and one as a singer.

A spark ignited. Competition successes followed, including audience-vote prizes, en route to Olga’s Europe-wide career of public concerto, chamber and solo performance, and international lecturing.

Originally from Ukraine, Olga is a London-based pianist, teacher and an established researcher of polyphonic music with a sunny personality, and comfortable in the language. Communication is in her DNA, instrumentally and verbally. Her concert and learning audiences respond to this, furthering her popularity.

In 2004 Olga was awarded a Presidential Scholarship for the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music in Kyiv, Ukraine, graduating in 2006 under the expert tutelage of Valery Kozlov. From there she went on to the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester to study with the inspirational Norma Fisher.

Her collaborators have included Arie Vardi, Charles Rosen, Michel Beroff, Stephen Hough, Nelson Goerner and Angela Hewitt.

In 2017, she became the RNCM’s first student to receive a PhD in Performance. Working under David Horne, her research focused on Sergey Taneyev, his influence on his contemporaries and his development of practice and performance strategies.

On stage, Olga plays the classical piano mainstream and contemporary composers, covering a wide repertoire from Bach and Scarlatti to Carl Vine and James MacMillan. Her solo concert programmes are intelligently and informatively imagined.

She has had the pleasure of being a soloist with Kyiv Municipal Symphony Orchestra, Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, Dnipro Philharmonic Orchestra, Manchester Beethoven Orchestra, and Worthing Symphony Orchestra, performing concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Ravel and Prokofiev.

As well as around UK and Ukraine, her concert career has taken her to Hungary, Czech Republic, Latvia, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Spain and Australia.

Since 2021 Olga has been working in collaboration with London-based violinist of Polish origin – Kamila Bydlowska.

Off stage, Olga researches in music, lectures both children and adults, creates study days, and gives masterclasses. She is an Artistic Trustee co-driving the British charity, International Music in Performance & Education Foundation (IMPEF), and a judge at the annual Riga International Competition for Young Pianists.