Concert pianist, international soloist and winner of prestigious international competitions, Olivier Gardon won the Marguerite Long Grand Prix (1973), the Queen Elizabeth Prize (1975), the Viotti International Prize, the Monza International Prize, the Senigallia Prize and the Casella Prize in Naples. He is also a laureate of the Fondation de la Vocation and the Alex de Vries Foundation in Antwerp. He then embarked on a brilliant career as a soloist and chamber musician, which took him to the world's greatest musical capitals, where he gave recitals and concertos with major orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra, the Radio France Philharmonic and the Shinsei Nippon Orchestra. A guest at numerous festivals in France and abroad, Olivier Gardon is a piano teacher at the École Normale de Musique de Paris Alfred Cortot, having previously taught at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris and the Hochschule in Hanover. He has also been artistic director of the Académie Internationale d'été de Nice and is regularly invited to give masterclasses at numerous academies such as the Sommerakademie des Mozarteums in Salzburg, the Toho Gakuen School (Japan), the Académie de Musique Française in Kyoto, Yonsei University in Seoul, Bowdoin College in the United States, the Académie Musicale de Villecroze, Music'Alp Courchevel and the Musikhochschule in Leipzig.