Aksel Kolstad Aksel Kolstad (b. 1981) began playing the piano with his mother, actress and singer Kirsti Kolstad, as soon as he was big enough to sit on a chair next to the piano, at the age of two. When he turned five he began taking piano-lessons and became soon as interested in making his own music as playing historical music.
At the age of 10 Kolstad performed with an orchestra for the first time, playing Haydn piano-concerto i C-major. As a teenager he participated in several national piano-competitions, and in 1999 he won the 2nd prize in his class. At almost the same time he began studying both piano and composition with Wolfgang Plagge. After getting the highest grade in piano, amongst several other school-subjects as well, at the Greåker Music High School, he joined His Majesty The King's Music and Drill-platoon in 2001, being awarded with two prizes, one for the best military behavior and one for being chosen as the best musician of 2001. He received the second prize after playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in Oslo Concert Hall.  Kolstad served for one year as a percussionist, choir-instructor, conductor and as a royal pianist. After entering the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo in 2002, as only one out of two pianists who were excepted in the highest education-level that year, Kolstad has performed on radio, television and in several concert-halls in Norway and abroad, as a pianist, composer and a conductor. He finished his bachelor-degree, with prof. Sigurd Slåttebrekk, at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo in June 2006 and finished his
master-degree in August 2008 at the same Academy, focusing on the piano-concertos of George Gershwin.
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