Sodi Braide

Of Nigerian origin, born in England, pianist and conductor Sodi Braide studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, before continuing his studies at the Escuela Superior Reina Sofia in Madrid and the Accademia Internazionale del Pianoforte Lago di Como, with professors such as Françoise Thinat, Jacques Rouvier, Dimitri Bashkirov, Leon Fleisher, Alicia de Larrocha and Charles Rosen.

Sodi Braide won the prestigious Leeds competitions in 2003 and Van Cliburn in 2005. He has since been invited to play all over the world, notably in France (Radio France, Invalides, Festival Chopin à Bagatelle, Toulouse d’Eté au cloître des Jacobins, Salle Molière de Lyon, Flâneries Musicales de Reims), in the United Kingdom (Cheltenham Festival, Harrogate Festival, Cambridge Festival), in Switzerland (Victoria Hall, Geneva), in the United States (Ravinia Festival, Dame Myra Hess Recitals) , in South Korea (Kumho Arts Hall, Seoul Arts Center). In 2021, he played a duet with Khatia Buniatishvili during the 1st gala concert of the Philharmonie de Paris, he was invited to play again with her at the Klavierfestival Ruhr in June 2022. He performed with the Paris Mozart Orchestra, the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen (Germany), the Hallé orchestra (United Kingdom), the Cape Town and Johannesburg orchestras. Invited to play in South Africa in 1994, he was one of the first pianists of black African origin to perform in South Africa at the end of the Apartheid regime. At the age of twelve, Sodi Braide participated in the televised gala concert ‘Classic Aid II’, with artists such as Placido Domingo and Lorin Maazel.

He also practices orchestral conducting, in which he trained with Claire Levacher at the Paris Conservatory, then with Claire Gibault and her orchestra, the Paris Mozart Orchestra, which he will conduct on several occasions. Sodi Braide was also invited to direct the Ensemble Court-Circuit during the creation of the work “Pianopolis” by Michel Decoust, at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord.

Sodi Braide’s performances were broadcast on the Mezzo channel in France and the BBC in the United Kingdom. He recorded a first CD dedicated to César Franck for the Lyrinx label, followed by a Schubert recital published by Solstice in 2015, very favorably received by the press: **** Classica, “5 Diapasons”… In the Gramophone magazine (England ), Bryce Morrison writes: “Braide was born to play Schubert and, I suspect, many other things. »

Alongside his career as a soloist, Sodi Braide teaches at the Geneva Conservatory of Music.