Emma Tahmiziàn’s international career was launched when, at nineteen, the youngest contestant at the time, she won the Gold Medal at the Robert Schumann International Competition in Germany and subsequently made her Berlin debut. She has toured extensively in recital, as a soloist with orchestra, and in chamber music, performing in most of Europe’s major cities including Paris, Rome, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Geneva, Vienna, Prague, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vilnius, in Canada’s Toronto and Montréal, and in the United States. She has appeared at New York’s prominent concert venues including Distinguished Artists Series at the 92nd Y, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall, Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre, Symphony Space, and the Museum of Modern Art; The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC; The Los Angeles County Museum of Arts and the Ambassador Auditorium in Los Angeles; Jordan Hall in Boston. She has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as  the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, East Berlin Radio Symphony, Münster Symphony, Yale Philharmonia, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Prague Chamber Orchestra, as well as the leading orchestras in her native Bulgaria. 

Ms. Tahmiziàn has garnered international prizes from some of the world’s most coveted international competitions – the Van Cliburn, Tchaikovsky and Leeds – as well as from the J. S. Bach, Smetana, and Montréal international competitions, and is a winner of Pro Musicis International Award. Trailblazing through the international competitions scene during the cold war, presenting at the time a country from “the other side” of the iron curtain, she has often been the first contestant to have brought a prize from most of those competitions. The Van Cliburn, where she was the first woman to have received a prize after a sixteen-year gap prior to her participation, was a pivotal point in her life, and the United States became her second home country.  

Her recital programs span music of over five centuries – from William Byrd and Girolamo to Olivier Messsiaen, George Crumb, György Ligeti, John Coligliano, William Bolcom, Steve Mackey, André Boucourechliev, Ramón Laskano, Joan Tower, Tania Léon, and many others, both established and the up and coming. Works by contemporary composers, including Sebastian Currier and Ronn Yedidia, have been written for or dedicated to her. She has been bringing together music of past eras and contemporary pieces, taking part in groundbreaking performances, premiering new works for solo piano, concerto with orchestra, and in chamber music. As a founding member of MOSAIC, in the seventeen years of the unique quartet’s association, she has recorded and performed in video and multimedia productions. She has recorded for labels such as Koch International, New World Records, and has been presented in Cannes, at the MIDEM Classique Festival, with a Beethoven recording. 

Ms. Tahmiziàn’s performances have been hailed by critics as “electrifying” [New York Times]; “stunning” [The Times Record on her Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2],   “captivating, moving, ever inspiring – an absolutely fascinating, intense performance” [Sulzbach Zeitung on her Schumann, Davidsbündlertänze Op.6]. Fanfare magazine’s review on her recording of Sebastian Currier’s Theo’s Sketchbook reads: “Emma Tahmiziàn gives the sort of stunning performance composers dream of “.

A graduate of The Juilliard School and the Bulgarian National Music Conservatory, Emma Tahmiziàn began her piano studies at age three, and made her first public appearance at five. Her formative years encompass broad spectrum of schooling: from the Bulgarian Penka Petkova, a Leipzig Conservatory disciple, to Julia and Konstantiv Ganev, pupils of the legendary Heinrich Neuhaus; to the inspiring Felix Galimir at The Juilliard in New York City; to the great French pianist and pedagogue, Yvonne Léfébure, herself a student of Ravel, in France.   

Ms. Tahmiziàn has served as a faculty member at the Bowdoin International Music Festival for nearly three decades, an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Virginia, a visiting professor at the Lawrence University’s Music Conservatory, a lecturer at the College of the Holy Cross, and an assistant professor at the Bulgarian State Music Conservatory. She has given master classes and workshops for solo piano and chamber music on both continents, as well as presentations for the composition students at the Juilliard School, BIMF, and Middlebury College. She has served as an adjudicator in international competitions in Germany, Spain, and the United States, and has taken part in panel discussions, most recently at the 2024 Alink-Argerich Foundation 3rd International Conference.