BIOGRAPHY

Known for her expressivity and virtuosity, Ines Irawati is in demand both as a solo recitalist and a collaborative pianist.  Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, she began piano and composition instruction at age six at the Yamaha Music School in Indonesia. At age 12, she made her official debut playing the third Beethoven Piano Concerto and Chopin's first concerto with the Indonesian Youth Symphony.

As a performer and a composer, Irawati has performed her own compositions all over Indonesia, Singapore and Sri Lanka.  She was accepted in the Junior Original Concert, a  prestigious music program where young musicians compose original works and perform them around the world.  At the age of 15, she was invited to the International UNICEF Benefit in Japan, where she performed her first concerto with the Tokyo Symphony.  Her composition teachers include the renowned Indonesian composer, Slamat Abdul Syukur, and Donald Erb.  Her work for solo flute, “Flirting Belugas”, was published by the Manduca Music Publication.

Irawati was recommended by Jahja Ling, the appointed director of the San Diego Symphony, to join the prestigious Young Artists Program at Cleveland Institute of Music.  She was then accepted under full scholarship, and continued her studies at the Institute throughout her undergraduate years.  Her teachers and coaches include Olga Radosavljevich, Vivian Weilerstein, Anne Epperson, and Donald Weilerstein.  She received her Bachelors of Music with honors in 2000.

Irawati holds a Masters of Music degree from Yale University, where she studied with Claude Frank, and was coached by Peter Frankl, and Kikuei Ikeda, the second violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet. As both a solo and collaborative pianist, she has participated in master classes with such noted musicians as Emmanuel Ax, Murray Perahia, Martin Katz, Barbara Bonney, and Dawn Upshaw.

Irawati has won numerous prizes from competitions including the Suburban Concerto Competition, the Cleveland Institute of Music Concerto Competition, the D'angelo International Young Artists Competition, and the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus Competition.  She was also invited to perform Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F with the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra at Severance Hall.  

Her education also includes a summer music festival at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, where she studied vocal accompanying with Warren Jones and Marilyn Horne. She was awarded Best Accompanist by the Marilyn Horne Foundation, and was invited to collaborate with baritone Nikolai Janitzky for a New York debut.  She returned to the Academy as the recipient of the Fellowship Award for the 2005 Summer School and Music Festival.  In January of 2006, Irawati was invited by the Marilyn Horne Foundation to participate in the week-long musical event presented by The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall.  

She has collaborated with many chamber musicians such as Strings of the West, a resident quartet of the Midland-Odessa Symphony, and the Hyperion String Quartet, the resident quartet of San Diego State University.   She regularly performs with noted musicians including Jeff Thayer, Anthony McGill, Demarre McGill, and Jeremy Kurtz.

For the past four summers, Irawati has been invited by Dolora Zajick, the renowned dramatic mezzo-soprano, as the pianist and vocal coach for her new and up-coming summer program for young singers called The Institute for Young Dramatic Voices. 

She is the vocal coach at Point Loma Nazarene University, and currently lives in San Diego with her husband, Michael Krause.