Biography

Born in 1996 in Hungary, Ádám Szokolay started playing the piano at the age of four under the guidance of his mother. His uncle, pianist Balázs Szokolay, has been a mentor to him and has supported his musical growth since early childhood. In 2005 Adam was accepted to the Special School for Talented Children in the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, as one of the youngest students in the history of the school. Throughout his years as a student in the academy, his teachers were Gyöngyi Keveházi, Gábor Eckhardt, Attila Némethy and Dénes Várjon. He continued his studies at the Bard College Conservatory of Music in New York with Peter Serkin, and since 2018 he studies at the Franz Liszt Hochschule für Musik in Weimar under the guidance of Grigory Gruzman. From 2020 he is also taking lessons of Imre Rohmann in Salzburg's Mozarteum University.

Adam has participated in the master classes and took lessons of extraordinary artists like György Kurtág, Ferenc Rados, Zoltán Kocsis, Imre Rohmann, Richard Goode, Mikhail Voskresensky, Claudio Martínez-Mehner, Eldar Nebolsin, Muza Rubackyte, Ruben Dalibaltayan and Martin Helmchen. He also receives a scholarship from the International Academy of Music in Liechtenstein and participates in the intensive music weeks held there.

Adam is prizewinner of numerous international competitions - among others of the “Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition”, “The New York International Piano Competition” under the auspices of the Stecher & Horowitz Foundation, the “Carl Filtsch International Piano Competition” in Romania, the “International Chopin Piano Competition” in Budapest, the “Bartók World Competition” in 2019 and he is a “Junior Prima Prize” recipient.

Ádám has given concerts throughout Hungary and other European countries, in such venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, The Salle Cortot in Paris, the Great Hall of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and the Palace of Arts in Budapest. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Savaria and Miskolc Symphony Orchestras, the Budapest Strings and the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra among others, with such conductors as János Kovács, Mátyás Antal and Zsolt Hamar.  He is regularly invited for solo recitals in the Franz Liszt Memorial Museum and the Béla Bartók Memorial House. 

In 2017 Ádám assembled his own orchestra with fellow students of the Bard Conservatory and performed Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with them. Upcoming engagements include concerts with the Gyor Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hungarian State Opera's Orchestra, Liszt’s rarely performed Malédiction with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, solo recitals in the Franz Liszt Academy and in the Vilnius Music Festival.

Ádám was awarded the Sári Bíró Memorial Award and the Fischer Annie scholarship for his diligent work. From 2015 to 2018 he was a recipient of the Belinda & Stephen Kaye Full Scholarship at the Bard Conservatory in New York.