Oleg Roschin

Born in 1976 in St. Petersburg, Russia, Oleg immigrated to Israel in 1988, where he studied at the Jerusalem Music Academy. In 1992, he won the First Prize at the International Competition for Young Pianists in Ettlingen, Germany. He was subsequently invited to a series of piano recitals in Germany in Austria, and eventually went to study at the University of Arts in Berlin. There, he studied by the renowned pianists Hans Leygraf and Pascal Devoyon. During his study years, he won the Third Prize at the International Arthur Schnabel Piano Competition in Berlin, was a semi-finalist at the International Long-Thibauld Piano Competition in Paris in 1998, and won the Second Prize at the International Chamber Music Competition in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1999.

During the next five years, Oleg was active as a member of the Hackesches Hof Theater in Berlin, and the Mark Aizikovich Ensemble, Europe’s most successful group of Jewish folk musicians. During the folk music period of his career, Oleg has performed in New York, Moscow, the Ukraine, and many cities in Germany. He also continued to work as a classical pianist, and in 2002 and 2003 recorded two CDs with modern piano pieces written by the German composer Andreas Schmidt-Kaminsky. During that period, Oleg became interested in jazz. From 2003 to 2005, he studied by the well-known jazz pianist Wolfgang Koehler, the pupil of the jazz legend Barry Harris.

After Oleg moved to Shanghai in 2005, he quickly established himself as one of the leading jazz pianists in China. Oleg performs virtually every night at various local venues, including the most famous jazz clubs in Shanghai and China, the JZ Club, House of Blues and Jazz, and others. For five years straight, his band, the Illusion Trio, has been an inseparable part of the JZ Club program and the Chinese jazz scene. Since 2007, Oleg has been teaching jazz piano at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He has also been active as a classical pianist. His versatile performances have earned him the nickname “The Prince of Piano”.