Irina Feoktistova graduated from St. Petersburg Conservatoire, Russia. A classically trained pianist, she has toured Russia, Europe, and the United States as a soloist, duo pianist, accompanist, and most recently, with the world’s foremost performer of Baroque trumpet, Crispian Steele-Perkins.

As a duo pianist, she won third prize at the First International Competition of Contemporary Music Interpretation in Weimar, Germany (1996) and was chosen to perform at Purcell Room in London for the Park Lane Group Young Artists Concert Series. As a piano soloist, she won the Kawai CD Recording Competition in 2004.

Ms. Feoktistova relocated to the United States in 1998, and since then she has performed extensively in the Chicago area. She has been involved in numerous musical theater productions as an accompanist and music director. She is also active in various projects performing Russian and American contemporary music. She is affiliated with CUBE, VOX 3 and MAVerick Ensembles in Chicago and the Union of Composers in St. Petersburg, where she performed a program of American contemporary music at the international festival St. Petersburg Musical Spring in May of 2005. She has been the Principal Keyboardist with Millennium Chamber Players (Chicago based ensemble) since its founding in 2006 and worked as Russian repetiteur with Chicago Lyric Opera.

He recordings include piano solo Classical and Contemporary music, Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs (with Russian singer Elena Antonenko) and Russian and American contemporary music on the CD entitled Musical Bridge-Chicago-St.Petersburg. Ms. Feoktistova was the pianist for the annual Russian Day Concert at Carnegie Hall in the spring of 2008 and in August 2008 she was collaborative pianist for the singers and with the orchestra for International Opera Theater’s world premiere of Romeo e Giulietta in Città della Pieve, Italy.