Born and Raised in California, Shreyas Verma is a classically trained pianist currently studying music performance at San Jose State University. He has shown a love for music from a very young age and began to play the piano at age six with his first teacher, Helen Wang. Throughout his studies, he grew strongly attached to the music of many Romantic-era composers, namely, Chopin and Rachmaninoff.
As a performer and a musician, he aims to convey his stories and emotions through the pieces he chooses and hopes to evoke similar emotions from those who hear his playing. As a newer-generation classical pianist, he hopes to interpret and perform these timeless pieces with a fresh take and to remind people that classical music is not something stoic and inflexible.
His most notable performance was at Carnegie Hall in December 2022, and he has had several other performances at the Oakland Inter-Stake Center of the Church. He has also competed in several competitions and has won first place in the Marker and Pioneer International Music Competition, and second place two separate times at the United States Open Music Competition.
Chloe Retika was the first teacher who had truly inspired him to pursue music as a career, and afterwards, he studied with Boaz Simovici and Anna Poklewski throughout his final years in high school. Both teachers greatly influenced his interpretation of music and refined his technical abilities. Aside from his teachers, Tiffany Poon, Martha Argerich, and Daniel Barenboim are major inspirations for him as an artist. Their virtuosity and knowledge as musicians motivated his goals as an artist and influenced his understanding of many classical pieces.
You can find Shreyas’s 2023 International Piano Competition performance here.