Francesco Nicolosi is one of the most distinguished pianists of the Italian tradition. He studied under Vincenzo Vitale and was a prizewinner of the International Santander Piano Competition in 1980. In the same year he won the second prize at the Concours International d’Exècution Musicale in Geneva and began his career as one of the world’s foremost pianists of his generation.

He performed in some of the most important concert halls including the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, Victoria Hall of Genève, Radio Nacional in Madrid, Salle Gaveau in Paris, Teatro alla Scala and Sala Verdi in Milano, Teatro dell’Opera and Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Roma, Teatro di San Carlo in Napoli, Herkulessaal in München, Brahmssaal in Wien, Kennedy Center in Washington among others. He toured in Iceland, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Russia, Japan, Singapore and China and has been a regular guest at festivals such as: Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Rossini Opera Festival, Ravenna Festival, Festival di Ravello, Festival Pianistico Internazionale di Brescia e Bergamo, Taormina Teatro Musica, Settimane Musicali in Stresa, Estate Musicale Sorrentina, Settembre Musica in Torino, Marathon Internacional in Sevilla, Festival de Musique in Menton, Rencontres Musicales en Artois, Weimar Kunstfest, Budapest Liszt Festival and many others.

His recordings have been published by Nuova Era, Naxos and Marco Polo, and received enthusiastic reviews from important European, Asian and American musical magazine, and are frequently broadcast worldwide on the radio. The authoritative critic and musicologist Paolo Isotta has written of Francesco Nicolosi’s recording of two rare concerts of Paisiello: “(…) listening to him playing is enough to remind us that no one today can match his luminosity of sound, his ability to draw out the song-like legato qualities of a keyboard instrument (…) he has acquired a reputation as one of our greatest living pianists (…) The great Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli performed eighteenth-century works, his inspiration came principally from the same source as Nicolosi’s, but perhaps lacked some of the latter’s lucidity and coherence. Nicolosi is now perfecting the process begun by Michelangeli”. His recordings of Thalberg and Liszt/Bellini paraphrases received the Bellini Golden Prize. As president of the Sigismund Thalberg International Study Centre, he has done intense research and revaluation of the music of the legendary Austrian pianist.

Francesco Nicolosi is also artistic director of the Sigismund Thalberg International Piano Competition and was artistic director of several festivals such as I concerti d’Estate di Villa Guariglia in Amalfi Coast, Jeux d’Art Festival Internazionale Villa d’Este in Tivoli and Roccaraso in Musica. From January 2015 to December 2019 he was the artistic director of the Opera House Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania.