Meet pianist - Gile Bae

Gile Bae, born in 1994 in Rotterdam (Netherlands), made her debut as a five-year-old soloist in South Korea with Haydn's Piano Concerto in C major. At the age of six, she was admitted to the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where she studied under the guidance of Marlies van Gent. She has performed with various orchestras in England, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Italy. She continued her studies at the International Piano Academy "Incontri col Maestro" under the direction of M. Franco Scala, graduating in 2017.

In 2000, Gile Bae won first prize at the Dutch International Steinway & Sons Piano Competition, the EPTA International Piano Competition in Belgium, and the Maria Campina International Piano Competition in Portugal. She also won first prizes at the Princess Christina Competition and the Young Musical Talent Foundation Competition in the Netherlands. At fifteen, she won first prize in the higher category of the International Steinway & Sons Piano Competition and represented the Netherlands at the International Steinway & Sons Festival, where she performed at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg.

Gile Bae has performed for the Royal Family and gave a concert in 2013 at the Alma Mater Studiorum in Bologna for Aung San Suu Kyi during the awarding of an honorary doctorate. In 2014, she performed Haydn's Piano Concerto in D major under the direction of Vladimir Ashkenazy on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the International Piano Academy "Incontri col Maestro" in Imola. In 2015, she participated in the MITO Festival with a recital dedicated to Johannes Brahms and performed at various editions of the "La Milanesiana" festival organized by Elisabetta Sgarbi.

In 2017, Gile Bae recorded Bach's Goldberg Variations, which were re-released in 2019 by the Foné label after performances in several venues, including the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. She gave a recital in the Sala Verdi of the Milan Conservatory for the presentation of the 2018 season of the Società dei Concerti, where she performed works by J.S. Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

In 2018, she was named a "Bösendorfer Artist" in Vienna. She performed Chopin's First Piano Concerto in a version for piano and string quintet, accompanied by the first chairs of the Teatro alla Scala, both in the Mediobanca hall in Milan and at the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Malta, in the presence of the president of the republic.

At the invitation of Sir András Schiff, Gile Bae performed at the Ruhr Piano Festival and participated in the "Building Bridges" project during the 2020/2021 season in various European venues, including De Singel in Antwerp, the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, and the Konzerthaus in Berlin.

In 2021, she performed Saint-Saëns' Fifth Piano Concerto "Egyptian" during the opening of the Teatro Coccia in Novara with the RAI National Symphony Orchestra. In October 2022, she performed again with the RAI Orchestra under the direction of Fabio Luisi, playing Beethoven's First Piano Concerto in Ferrara. On December 31, 2022, she performed the same concerto at the Royal Opera House of Muscat (Oman), accompanied by the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jan Latham-Koenig. In January 2024, she returned to Oman for a recital and masterclass.

In 2024, an audio and video album was released on the Arcana label featuring Johann Sebastian Bach's piano concertos, in collaboration with the Archi di Santa Cecilia in Rome. In September 2024, another album will be released on the Universal label with music by J.S. Bach and R. Schumann, produced by Michael Fine.