David Fray

French pianist David Fray was raised in Tarbes in southwestern France, near the Pyrenees, where he began taking piano lessons at the age of four. He went on to attend the Henri Duparc Music Conservatory in Tarbes, and later studied with Jacques Rouvier at the Paris Conservatory. In 2004 he won the second grand prize at the Montréal International Music Competition. As a soloist, Fray has collaborated with conductors Marin Alsop, Pierre Boulez, Semyon Bychkov, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniele Gatti, Paavo Järvi, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Jaap van Zweden. He has appeared with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the London Philharmonic, the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, and the Orchestre de Paris, among many others. In 2009 Fray made his first U.S. appearance with the Cleveland Orchestra, and subsequently played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Because of certain eccentricities in his performance style, Fray is often compared to Glenn Gould, though he claims to be more strongly influenced by Wilhelm Kempff. Fray has recorded for Virgin Classics, and is now an exclusive recording artist for Erato/Warner Classics.