Born in Berlin in 1969 into a musical family, cellist Alban Gerhardt played both piano and cello from a young age. His teachers included Boris Pergamenchikov and Frans Helmersson at the Musikhochschule in Cologne (1989–93) as well as Paul Tortelier, Heinrich Schiff, and the LaSalle Quartet. He made his debut at the Berlin Philharmonic in 1987. Since winning the ARD Competition in Germany in 1990, he has performed with many of the leading orchestras of Europe, the United States, and Japan, and has collaborated with such conductors as Christoph Eschenbach, Kurt Masur, Sir Colin Davis, Jesus López-Cóbos, Paavo Järvi, Fabio Luisi, Jeffrey Tate, Andreas Delfs, Keith Lockhart, and Bernhard Klee. He made his Berlin Philharmonic debut under Semyon Bychkov in 1991. In 1993 he won the Leonard Rose Competition. Other important debuts have included Vienna in 1997, the London Proms in 2000, and, more recently, the Baltimore Symphony under Sir Neville Marriner as well as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä. As a recitalist, he has appeared at such venues as the Wigmore Hall in London, the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Alice Tully Hall in New York (his American debut), the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Musikverein in Vienna, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. He has been partnered by pianists including Christoph Eschenbach, Peter Serkin, Jean-Philippe Collard, Steven Osborne, Cecile Licad, Lars Vogt, and Anne-Marie McDermott. Gerhardt is one of the featured artists in the BBC’s Young Generation Scheme. In 2004 he returned to play with the Dresden and Monte-Carlo Philharmonic (Dmitri Kitaenko and Marek Janowski); and to debuts under Yakov Kreizberg with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Nederland and Los Angeles Philharmonic (Hollywood Bowl), as well as with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne and the symphony orchestras of Berlin, Trondheim, Detroit, and BBC London. The year 2005 will see his debuts with the Boston Symphony under Christoph von Dohnanyi and with the Fort Worth, Spokane, Columbus, Louisville, and Jacksonville symphony orchestras; as well as tours through Europe with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic and the Nederland Philharmonic.