Dutch pianist Aidan Mikdad has a rare gift for making audiences feel that music is being discovered in the moment, not merely performed. Born on November 19, 2001, he grew up drawn to the piano with a seriousness that belied his age and the competition world quickly took notice.
At eleven, he won first prize at the Koninklijk Concertgebouw Competition. The following year he became winner of the International Piano Competition of Lagny-sur-Marne. But it was in 2015 that something deeper took hold: after winning the Premio Internazionale Pianistico “A. Scriabin” he became genuinely fascinated by the composer, going on to learn all of Scriabin’s piano sonatas and pursue serious academic research into his work. That same year, Hélène Grimaud awarded him the Klavier-Festival Ruhr Scholarship, a recognition that carried particular personal weight.
Further acknowledgements followed: the Royal Concertgebouw Young Talent Award and the Tabor Foundation Piano Award from the Verbier Festival in 2017, the Pnina Salzman Memorial Prize in Israel in 2018, and fourth place at the Maria Canals Competition in Barcelona. In 2021, still only nineteen, he became the youngest semi-finalist at the Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition in Brussels. More recently, he won first prize at the Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary Competition in 2023 at Wigmore Hall. After winning the Manhattan Music Competition in 2024, he made his Carnegie Hall debut performing Chopin’s 3rd Sonata, a piece he has played and refined since childhood. In 2025, he received second prize with the French Music Prize at the Épinal International Piano Competition.
He completed his Bachelor’s degree summa cum laude at the Amsterdam Conservatory under Professor Naum Grubert, then pursued a Master of Arts in Performance with Distinction at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he also received the DipRAM — awarded for an outstanding final recital — and held the Bicentenary Scholarship for graduate studies. He studied with Professor Joanna MacGregor between 2021 and 2023, before returning to Professor Grubert in Amsterdam, where he completed his master’s degree in 2025 with the highest distinction: 10 summa cum laude. He also received praise for his research into Scriabin as part of his Master Thesis.
Along the way he has crossed paths and learned from some of the finest pianists of our time, among them Sergei Babayan, Klaus Hellwig, Richard Goode, Sir András Schiff, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Dame Imogen Cooper, Arcadi Volodos, Igor Levit, and Arie Vardi. He has performed across Belgium, France, Monaco, Germany, Israel, Italy, Czech Republic, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, The United States, Liechtenstein, and Spain.