Kit Armstrong

Pianist and composer Kit Armstrong is unusual in that he is frequently active in both those activities. He is the owner of a former church in France where he presents concerts and, during the coronavirus pandemic, broadcast daily videos.
Armstrong was born in Los Angeles on March 5, 1992. As a child, he was oriented toward sciences, mathematics, and languages, but he also taught himself the fundamentals of composition by reading encyclopedia articles. He began taking piano and composition lessons as a child, but throughout his student years, he combined music studies with science and math courses. Armstrong attended Christian schools in the Los Angeles area, taking courses while in high school at California State University at Long Beach in physics and at Chapman University in Orange County in music composition. Armstrong studied biology, physics, mathematics as well as music at Utah State University and then entered the Curtis Institute of Music and the University of Pennsylvania at age 11. He moved to London in 2004, studying at the Royal Academy of Music and earning a bachelor’s degree in 2008, and also taking mathematics classes at Imperial College, London. He earned a master’s degree in science from Marie Curie University in Paris in 2012. Beginning in 2005, he studied privately with Alfred Brendel.
Armstrong made his debut at eight with the Long Beach Bach Festival Orchestra, and he has appeared as a concerto soloist with top orchestras in Europe, the U.S., and Asia, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Tokyo Symphony, and the Baltimore Symphony. He has given solo recitals across Europe and the U.S., including one at Carnegie Hall in 2003 that celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Steinway & Sons company. Armstrong is also an avid chamber music player and vocal accompanist, working with such artists as the Szymanowski Quartet and singers Andreas Wolf, Thomas Bauer, and Christiane Karg. In the summer of 2018, he performed 24 concerts at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany as the festival’s prizewinner-in-residence. In 2012, Armstrong purchased the Church of Sainte-Thérèse-de-l’Enfant-Jésus, Hirson, in France; he has given concerts from there, and during the coronavirus pandemic, presented daily video broadcasts.
Armstrong has composed a symphony, five piano concertos, solo piano music, and a variety of chamber music. His works have been performed by various first-rank ensembles, including the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, which premiered his fortepiano concerto in 2015. They are published by Edition Peters. Armstrong has recorded for the Genuin, Sony Classical, and Deutsche Grammophon labels; his debut on the latter was William Byrd, John Bull: Visionaries of Piano Music, which appeared in 2021. ~ James Manheim