Jonathan Békés is one of Australia’s leading cellists and is a renowned solo artist, chamber musician, orchestral musician and educator.

Békés began playing the cello at the age of 10. He studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) learning from some of Australia’s leading cellists including Howard Penny, Julian Smiles and Susan Blake.

Currently, Békés is Principal Cello of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, a position that he has held since 2021. He plays regularly with the Australian World Orchestra and the Southern Cross Soloists and has appeared as soloist with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Willoughby Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Youth Orchestra. As an educator Békés has worked closely with Musica Viva Australia and Australian Youth Orchestra and is a passionate advocate of music for all people in all walks of life.

In his spare time (not much these days), Békés is a keen sportsman and an outdoors enthusiast. He is an overly passionate golfer, crazed squash player and an AFL fanatic. He follows the Sydney Swans and the Hobart Hurricanes and loves to go on hiking adventures across Tasmania with his family.

Described as an exhilarating performer with faultless technique and fearless command of the piano, Russian-Australian concert pianist Konstantin Shamray performs at an international level with the world’s leading orchestras and concert presenters.

Konstantin was born in Novosibirsk and commenced his studies at the age of six with Natalia Knobloch. He then studied in Moscow at the Russian Gnessin Academy of Music with Professors Tatiana Zelikman and Vladimir Tropp, and the Hochschule fuer Musik in Freiburg, Germany, with Professor Tibor Szasz.

In 2008, Konstantin burst onto the concert scene when he won First Prize at the Sydney International Piano Competition. He is the first and only competitor to date in the 40 years of the competition to win both First and People’s Choice Prizes, in addition to six other prizes. He then went on to win First Prize at the 2011 Klavier Olympiade in Bad Kissingen,Germany and has performed at the Kissinger Sommer festival. In July 2013, following chamber recitals with Alban Gerhardt and Feng Ning, he was awarded the festival’s coveted Luitpold Prize for “outstanding musical achievements”.

Since then, Konstantin has performed extensively throughout the world in recitals, as a soloist with orchestras and as a chamber musician. In Australia, highlights have included engagements with the Adelaide, Queensland, West Australia, Tasmanian and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, as well as tours with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and ANAM Orchestra. Outside of Australia, he has performed with the Russian National Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, Orchestre National de Lyon, Prague Philharmonia, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and the Calgary Philharmonic amongst many others. He has enjoyed collaborating with distinguished conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Vladimir Spivakov, Dmitry Liss, Tugan Sokhiev and Nicholas Milton.

Chamber music plays a strong role in Konstantin’s musical career and collaborations have included tours with the Australian String Quartet, Southern Cross Soloists, Richard Tognetti, Natsuko Yoshimoto, Alban Gerhardt, Kristof Barati, Andreas Brantelid, Li Wei Qin and Leonard Elschenbroich. Konstantin has performed as part of the International Piano Series in Adelaide, and at the Melbourne Recital Centre and Ukaria Cultural Centre. He has enjoyed critical acclaim at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Bochum Festival in Germany, the Mariinsky International Piano Festival and the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Adelaide Festival, Musica Viva Sydney and Huntington festivals. Konstantin has recorded albums with the labels Naxos, ABC Classics and Fonoforum.

Konstantin was formerly Lecturer in Piano at the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide and was awarded his PhD in 2020 for his performance-based project ‘The piano as Kolokola, Glocken and Cloches: performing and extending the European traditions of bell-inspired piano music’. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Piano at the University of Melbourne. Konstantin is open to research supervisions, with particular areas of interest being Russian piano music of the 20th century and bell-inspired piano performance traditions.