Bio

"With her intellectual bent, [Hales] is likely to become a standard in Bach studies."

- Michael Johnson, International Piano

Hailing from Arizona, U.S.A., Erin Hales began her pianistic journey at the age of five with Zhu Hong, under whose direction she quickly gained notoriety. Professional study of the instrument began for Hales at seventeen, when she joined the studio of Stanislav Ioudenitch, gold medalist of the 2001 Van Cliburn competition and founder of the International Center for Music at Park University (Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.A.). Upon completing her studies with Ioudenitch, she embarked on postgraduate work with Maestro William Grant Naboré at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland. In 2016, the legendary International Piano Academy Lake Como invited Hales to study within its ranks.

Thanks in part to her extensive research and adoption of historical performance techniques, Hales is rapidly earning critical and popular esteem across the globe. Her evocative style and unyielding conviction have garnered her performances across the United States, as well as in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the Russian Federation. Critics have praised her cadenzas and ornamentation as “so Bachian as to be easily mistaken as his, not hers” (M. Johnson, International Piano) with some dubbing her the “new Rosalyn Tureck” (J. Hoffelé, Discophilia). Besides Bach, her informed yet visceral renditions of the French Baroque keyboard masters, including Jean-Philippe Rameau and François Couperin, have won her increasing accolades in recent years.

Hales' debut album, featuring Book I of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, was released worldwide in 2015 as part of a collaboration between Artalinna and Academy Classical Music. Upon widespread acclaim of the work, International Piano included Hales in their July/August 2016 feature of ten noteworthy female pianists under the age of thirty. In 2022, she received an invitation to record the second book of the Well-Tempered Clavier in Cremona, Italy; the resulting project released on June 8, 2023. Both CD sets are available for purchase here (for listeners in the U.S.) and here (for listeners in Europe).

In 2017, Hales followed her lifelong passion for teaching and founded the Parnassus Piano Academy, located in her home state of Arizona. She maintains an active studio wherein she coaches individual students on interpretation, music theory, chamber music, historical performance, and composition. Her students have become laureates in piano and composition competitions on the national and international stage alike.

An avid collaborative pianist, Hales co-founded the Evox Ensemble with cellist Ruth Wilde in 2019. Since its inception, the duo has defied traditional boundaries of the repertoire, performing everything from original Monteverdi transcriptions to Arvo Pärt.