Indian-American pianist Kunal Lahiry is a current BBC New Generation Artist and recipient of the 2021 Carl Bechstein Foundation scholarship. Recent performance highlights include at the Wigmore Hall, Elbphilharmonie, Kennedy Center, Pierre Boulez Saal, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Carnegie Hall Weill Recital Room, Musée d’Orsay, Ludwigsburg Festival, Life Victoria de Los Angeles Festival, and at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute. In June 2023, Kunal curated a ‘Queer Song Festival’ at St. George’s in Bristol, which was broadcasted by BBC Radio 3. He has also been heard on Icelandic National Public Radio RÁS1, Austrian Radio Ö1, RBB Kultur, and was featured on ARTE’s ‘Hope@Home’ and ‘Europe@Home’ series hosted by violinist Daniel Hope. This season includes appearances at the Philharmonie de Paris, Elbphilharmonie, BBC Philharmonic, Wigmore Hall, and more.

Kunal has commissioned and premiered works by Nico Muhly, Errollyn Wallen, Nahre Sol, Heloise Werner, Alex Ho, Pablo Campos, Molly Joyce, Lyra Pramuk Viktor Orri Árnason, Guðmundur Emilsson, Zachary Radler, Zubaida Azezi, and Edo Frenkel. He is currently in the process of a long commission project to create a trans*Winterreise — taking the dramatic scope and psychological landscape of Schubert/Wilhelm Müller’s song cycle and reimagining it as a contemporary narrative for the queer identity and journey; a cycle of 24 new songs by queer poets and composers which speak specifically from this perspective. He received grants from the Musikfonds and the Center for Musical Excellence to finance and co-produce an interdisciplinary video project entitled ‘Homescapes’ with Icelandic soprano and visual artist Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir, and created a music video with Boomtown Media Productions exploring queerness in classical music through the support of the Liedzentrum Heidelberg. In 2022, Kunal was invited to create a conceptual, interdisciplinary song recital for Heidelberger Frühling Festival “Lied.LAB”, which he called ‘Sleep Cycle of an Insomniac’. He has collaborated with pop singer Lie Ning in Berlin and performed together at the 2020 Reeperbahn in Hamburg.

Kunal has been invited to several young artist programs for pianists specializing in art song. In 2018, he was selected for the inaugural Royaumont-Orsay Academy, culminating in a live album recording released by B Records. He also joined the first Song Studio, mentored by Renee Fleming, at Carnegie Hall, was invited by Thomas Hampson to participate in the Heidelberg Lied Academy, and received the Sam Hutchings prize at Malcolm Martineau’s Oxenfoord international Summer School.  

Originally from Gainesville, Georgia, Kunal was a Schulich Scholar at McGill University, and graduated with distinction in song interpretation from the Hochschule for Müsik “Hanns Eisler”. He is an Equilibrium Young Artist, Samling Artist, Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Artist, and Britten Pears Young Artist. Kunal is currently based in Berlin.