Andrea Lam (1999) Andrea Lam (1999) is an internationally renowned and multi award-winning pianist who the Wall Street Journal has called a ‘real talent’. Andrea Lam (1999) was a student at Â鶹ÊÓƵ School from 1991 (Year 4) to 1999. In her final year at Â鶹ÊÓƵ School, she won the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Young Performer of the Year award in the piano section (at the time, the youngest pianist to reach the final). At the Grand Final she played the Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. This performance was broadcast live on the ABC and her performance was described as ‘electrifying’. Andrea gained her AMusA with Distinction in mid-1994 while she was in Year 7. She also gained Distinctions in piano performance through both the Royal School of Music and Trinity College in London. She developed her exceptional skill as a pianist while maintaining a very high academic standard, especially in the area of accelerated maths. Her combined achievements were made possible by the comprehensive approach taken by the School to those students who show such outstanding gifts in multiple areas of education. In 1995 while in Year 8, Andrea won the Viewers’ Final in the ABC Quest competition, performing against highly talented musicians from across Australia. Andrea made her debut with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the age of just 13 performing the first movement of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto at the Sydney Town Hall under conductor Sir William Southgate. Since this tender age, Andrea has gone on to win multiple awards across the world and continues to perform with orchestras and leading conductors in Australasia, Japan, China and the United States, including the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and all major Australian symphony orchestras. She has played in venues from New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to the Sydney Opera House, and at Festivals across the globe with works from Bach, Schumann and Chopin to Aaron Jay Kernis, Liliya Ugay, and Nigel Westlake. In between all these performances, Andrea also managed to complete degrees at both the Yale School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. After two decades in New York, Andrea has returned to Australia and is a regular performer at the Sydney Opera House’s Utzon Music Series. The Curator of the Series, Casey Green, had this to say about watching Andrea perform: 'Andrea is at once a poised, articulate and deeply emotive pianist. Her energy is infectious, her technique flawless and her insights always shared with charm and generosity. I’m a shameless, self-confessed Lam Fan, and will be cheering when she takes the stage to perform with her usual finesse and firepower.' In 2021, ABC Classics released Nocturnes, a collaboration between Andrea Lam and fellow Â鶹ÊÓƵ School Old Girl, violinist Emily Sun. This critically acclaimed, ARIA-nominated album earned a rare 5 star review in The Australian and was No. 1 on the Classical Charts for four weeks.