In a programme of Bach: Sheep may safely graze (arr. Petri), Beethoven: Sonata Op. 110; Scriabin: Sonata No. 4; Liszt: Ballade No. 2; Ravel: Sonatine and Franck: Prelude, Chorale and Fugue
Chelsea de Souza is a Steinway Young Artist from Mumbai, India. A musician with extensive performing experience, she has won four All-India piano competitions organized by the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation, Musiquest Academy and the Con Brio Piano Festival, the 2010 IIYM international piano competition, and the 2013 Ohio Tuesday Musical Scholarship Organization competition. De Souza has been interviewed on NBC TV and performed live on Kansas Public Radio. In addition to numerous appearances in the US, Belgium, and Germany, de Souza has given performances across India, with the Bombay Chamber Orchestra as well as in personal concert tours as a soloist and in joint voice and piano recitals with her sister Chloe.
In 2016, de Souza won Oberlin’s highly competitive Senior Concerto Competition and performed solo with the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestra, receiving a standing ovation. De Souza is a musician of varied interests, both solo and collaborative; in addition to her more classically oriented pursuits, she joined the Contemporary Music Ensemble for their tour to Chicago in January 2016, has been part of Oberlin’s Performance and Improvisation Series for two years (including a Young Artist residency with the Detroit String and Wind Society in 2015), and now continues to perform as part of Peabody’s Modern Orchestra and contemporary ensembles including ‘Now Hear This’.
As a singer, she was co-director and musical arranger for Oberlin’s longest-running all-female a cappella group ‘Nothing But Treble’.
The recipient of three summer music scholarships to study with Sheila Arnold at the Hochschule für Musik in Köln, Germany, de Souza has also attended Pianofest in the Hamptons 2013, PianoTexas 2014, and Rebecca Penney’s Piano Festival 2017, as well as played for such internationally lauded artists as Maestro Zubin Mehta, Leon Fleisher, Sir András Schiff and Richard Goode. For her unparalleled achievements in music, she was awarded the Global Scholar-Education World Young Achievers Award in Music and Arts.
Chelsea de Souza is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in piano performance at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University with Russian concert pianist Boris Slutsky. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in International Politics and in Piano Performance and Vocal Accompanying from Oberlin College of Arts & Sciences and Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Romanian-American concert pianist Peter Takacs. Her mentors from her years of study in India include Shanti Seldon, Blossom Mendonca and Delia Varga.
