Alfredo Ovalles

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Alfredo’s start with music came at a very early age. According to his father, he asked for piano lessons as a gift for his 5th birthday. Not being from a musical family, his first experience of how a piano sounded did not come from classical music, but instead from an old videotape of a Queen concert that was always lying around the family’s home.
Alfredo started his formal music education with Professor Carlos Urbaneja in the “Juan José Landaeta” Conservatory of Music and in the Mozarteum School of Music in Caracas, and at the same time he was also gaining a lot of valuable experience playing keyboards, arranging and writing songs in rock and pop bands in Caracas. For Alfredo, “growing inside seemingly different universes made music seem like one single world, where borders were very blurry and performances in one genre could be informed by the experiences gained in a different, apparently unrelated type of stage”.
Alfredo is in demand as a soloist and chamber musician internationally. Engagements have taken him to Belarus, Germany, Poland, Romania, Spain, and the Dominican Republic, among others, performing at wonderful venues including the Berliner Philharmonie, the Wiener Konzerthaus, and King’s Place in London. He had the pleasure of performing not only solo recitals but also together with orchestras such as the Polish Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra in Gdańsk, the Orchestra of the Academic and Musical Theater of Minsk, Belarus and the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic.

Alfredo also studied in the United States with Krassimira Jordan in the Baylor University School of Music, later on moving to Vienna, Austria, where he did postgraduate studies with Thomas Kreuzberger at the University of Music and Performing Arts. Alongside this he has also received the advice of artists such as Gabriela Montero, Anton Nel, Walter Blankenheim and Kristiina Juntuu. In parallel to his studies, Alfredo was active in the competition circuit, receiving awards such as the first prize in the VIII International “Franz Schubert” Competition in Bulgaria and the second prizes in the IV “María Clara Cullell International Piano Competition” in San José de Costa Rica and the 14th Osaka International Music Competition in Japan.
Due to his never-ending desire for musical experimentation, Alfredo devotes a big part of his time working with composers and performing premieres of pieces written for him or in collaboration with groups like Diaspora Duo, Green Thing Ensemble, and The Black Page Orchestra.