Cyprien Katsaris, the French-Cypriot pianist and composer, was born on 5 May 1951 in Marseilles. He first began to play the piano at the age of four, in Cameroon where he spent his childhood. A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire where he studied piano and chamber music, Mr. Katsaris won the International Young Interpreters Rostrum-UNESCO (Bratislava 1977), the First Prize in the International Cziffra Competition (Versailles 1974) and he was the only western-European prize-winner at the 1972 Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Competition.