Rohan de Silva
Rohan De Silva’s partnerships with violin virtuosos Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Cho-Liang Lin, Midori, Joshua Bell, Benny Kim, Kyoko Takezawa, Vadim Repin, Gil Shaham, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Julian Rachlin, James Ehnes and Rodney Friend have led to highly acclaimed performances at recital venues all over the world. With these and other artists he has performed on the stages of Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Philadelphia Academy of Music, Ambassador Theater in Los Angeles, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, La Scala in Milan and in Tel-Aviv, Israel. Mr. De Silva’s festival appearances include Aspen, Ravinia, Interlochen, Seattle Chamber Music, Santa Fe Chamber Music, Manchester, Schleswig-Holstein, Pacific Music Festival and the Wellington Arts Festival in New Zealand. He has performed chamber music in Beijing with the American String Quartet and has appeared in recital worldwide with Itzhak Perlman.
Alongside Mr. Perlman, Mr. De Silva has performed multiple times at the White House, most recently in 2012 at the invitation of President Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama for Israeli President and Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Shimon Peres; and at a State Dinner in 2007, hosted by President George W. Bush and Mrs. Bush for Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh. A native of Sri Lanka, Mr. De Silva was invited in 2015 by the Prime Minister of his country to perform at a luncheon for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on his historic visit to Sri Lanka.
In the 2025/26 season, Mr. De Silva tours alongside Itzhak Perlman with recitals across North America including San Francisco, Baltimore, Austin, Palm Desert and Stony Brook. He also performs with Mr. Perlman on the program An Evening with Itzhak Perlman which captures highlights of Mr. Perlman’s career through narrative and multi-media elements, intertwined with performance. Mr. De Silva served on faculty at the Perlman Music Program from 2000 to 2007 and currently teaches at the Juilliard School where he has served on faculty since 1991 and at Heifetz International Music Institute. He has led masterclasses in Collaborative Piano at University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University in Bloomington and the University of Gainesville in Florida.
In November 2025, Pentatone released Mr. De Silva’s recordings of works by Moszkowski, Ponce, Ravel, Sarasate, and Ysaÿe with violinists Hina and Fiona Khuong-Huu in their debut album Dear to Us.
Summer 2025 saw the release of Mr. De Silva’s recordings on the Chandos album “An American Affair: American Works for Flute” with flutist Lisa Friend, and Mr. De Silva was the featured Collaborative Artist performing in chamber music concerts at Germany’s Mortizburg Festival.
In previous seasons, Mr. De Silva toured with Mr. Perlman in sold-out concerts throughout Asia, visiting Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and to Europe in their first appearances as a duo in London (Barbican Centre), Paris (Philharmonie de Paris) and Munich (Gasteig). In North America, he has performed with Mr. Perlman at notable venues including Los Angeles’ Disney Hall, San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, Chicago’s Lyric Opera, West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center. Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, D.C. at the Kennedy Center and in New York at Carnegie Hall, to name a few. In 2020, at the invitation of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mr. De Silva performed for an exclusive guest list at the Supreme Court with Mr. Perlman in Washington D.C. Mr. De Silva also performed at Center Stage for Strings in Michigan, Innsbrook Institute in Missouri and Maui Music Festival in Hawaii.
Mr. De Silva began his piano studies with his mother, Primrose De Silva, and with Mary Billimoria. He spent six years at the Royal Academy of Music in London studying with Hamish Milne and received many awards including the Grover Bennett Scholarship, the Christian Carpenter Prize, the Martin Music Scholarship, the Harold Craxton Award, and the Chappell Gold Medal for best overall performance. In 2015, he was appointed Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Mr. De Silva was the first recipient of a special scholarship in the arts from the President’s Fund of Sri Lanka. This enabled him to enter the Juilliard School, studying with Martin Canin, Felix Galimir, and violin pedagogue Dorothy DeLay. He was awarded Best Accompanist at the Ninth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and received the Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artist Award presented to him by Itzhak Perlman at Carnegie Hall.
Mr. De Silva joined the collaborative arts and chamber music faculty of the Juilliard School in 1991, and in 1992 was awarded honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2015, he was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2001, he joined the faculty at the Ishikawa Music Academy in Japan, where he gives masterclasses in collaborative piano. Mr. De Silva additionally has served as a faculty member at the Great Wall International Music Academy in Beijing, China, and at the International String Academy in Cambridge, U.K. since 2011. He was on the faculty of the Perlman Music Program from 2000 to 2007. Radio and television credits include PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center and The Colbert Report with Itzhak Perlman, The Tonight Show with Midori, CNN’s “Showbiz Today”, NHK Television in Japan, National Public Radio, WQXR and WNYC in New York, Berlin Radio, and the 2000 Millennium Grammy Awards. Mr. De Silva has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Universal, CBS/SONY Classical, Collins Classics in London, RCA Victor and Chandos.
