At 13, William “Willy” Lehninger Swist has been playing the piano for as long as he can remember. Music, as they say, is in his blood. Swist was born in Hartford, Connecticut and has dual citizenship from the United States and Brazil. He is the third generation of a family of internationally renown professional musicians.
Willy was saturated with professional rehearsals and concerts in multiple styles and instrumentations. He began formal study at age 6 with Raquel Moreno at the Brattleboro Music Center. Quickly advancing in technique andrepertoire, Willy performed several Repertoire Classes and Showcase Recitals including his debut as a concerto soloist with the BMC String Orchestra on June 5, 2019. He participated and performed in the 2019 Massachusetts Suzuki Festival at New England Conservatory. In 2020, at age 8, William presented his first solo recital in the Main Hall of the Brattleboro Music Center. In 2022, he was a semi-finalist for the Kaufman International Youth Piano Competition and selected as a finalist for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra’s Stephen Hough Masterclass with his performance of Haydn’s D-Major Piano Concerto. Then, at the ripe old age of 11, he made his Carnegie Hall debut in July of 2023 as part of the Hotchkiss Piano Portals Gala Concertin the fall of 2023, he started at the Kaufman Music Center, where he studies with Igal Kesselman. He won the 2024 New York Piano Society Elena Leonova International Young Pianists Competition and the 2025 Kaufman Music Center Concerto Competition and on March 29, 2025, he will make his Zankel Hall debut at Carnegie Hall, performing Franz List’s Concert Etude No. 2 in F Minor, S. 144, “La leggierezza.”
Thomas Morisse-Corsetti–Guest Soloist