Enrique Graf
Music

1996 Distinguished Research Award

Enrique Graff started studying piano at the age of four with his mother, and then later at the Falleri-Balzo Conservatory. After winning all of the national competitions there, he came to the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University to study with Leon Fleisher on a full Scholarship from the Organization of America States and the Peabody.

In 1977 he and Katherine Jacobson won First Prize in the National Ensemble Two Piano Competition, and the following year Mr. Graf was the First Prize winner in the William Kapell International Piano Competition. In 1981 he won the East and West International Competition in New York City.

After fourteen years of teaching at the Peabody Preparatory, where he became chairman of the piano department, he received the Directors’ Recognition Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1989. He is Artist in Residence at the College of Charleston, where he has built an outstanding piano program, and is also on the graduate faculty of Carnegie Mellon University. His students have won many national and international competitions.

Graf is founder and Artistic Director of the International Piano Series in Charleston and the Young Artist Series in the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. He was awarded a Fellowship from Aspen Institute Executive Seminar, the Music Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission, Career Grants from the Charles Del Mar and Astral Foundations and Immigrant Achievement Award from the American Immigration Law Foundation.