İzem Gürer

İzem Gürer is a Turkish pianist, educator, and chamber musician. Born in Istanbul in 1999, she began her piano studies at the age of eight with concert pianist Birsen Ulucan, complemented by solfège and harmony studies with composer Mehmet Nemutlu.

From 2013 to 2021 she studied at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid, invited into the class of Prof. Dmitri Bashkirov as one of his youngest students. She received the diploma of most outstanding student of her chair from Her Majesty Queen Sofía of Spain, was twice named Best Young Musician of the Year, and pursued an intensive chamber music formation with Prof. Márta Gulyás and Özcan Ulucan, supported by the Albéniz Foundation and Yamaha scholarships.

She completed her Master in Performance at the Musik-Akademie Basel in the class of Prof. Zoltán Fejérvári (2021–2023), and is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate in Performance at Stony Brook University, New York, in the class of Prof. Christina Dahl, where she also serves as a Teaching Assistant. She is a faculty member at Grace Music School on Long Island.

An active soloist and chamber musician, she has performed in Spain, Turkey, Austria, Greece, France, the United Kingdom, and Colombia, including the UIS International Piano Festival — as recitalist, masterclass artist, and competition juror — and the Oxford Piano Festival. With Trio Fundación Mahou San Miguel she won first prize at the International Chamber Music Competition of Arnuero, and in 2020 performed Beethoven's Triple Concerto under Pablo Heras-Casado at the Teatro Monumental in Madrid. She has worked in masterclasses with Menahem Pressler, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Nikolai Demidenko, Dmitri Alexeev, Josep Colom, and Luis Fernando Pérez, among others.