How did a young piano prodigy from regional Queensland become one of the world’s most up-and-coming musicians?

Jayson Gillham had been on the competition circuit for ten years when he finally won big in 2014. He had just given an outstanding performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto at the Montreal International Music Competition. “There were six of us in the final of the Montreal Prize,” he tells me over the phone from his homebase in London, “and we were backstage. Then we had to listen to the names being announced in reverse order.” Unlike other competitions where the results are revealed in advance, Gillham received a genuine surprise when his name was announced as the winner. “It was just a dream,” he says.

Since then, his career has significantly taken off, with international concert appointments, tours, and he has just signed a three-album deal with ABC Classics. Jayson Gillham now has the world as his stage, but the young piano prodigy came from much more humble beginnings. Growing up in Dalby, Queensland, Gillham found he wasn’t exactly at the pointy end of classical music making. While there was a popular local eisteddfod, Gillham had already been blocked from entering...