Pianist Khatia Buniatishvili was signed to the Sony Classical label in her early 20s after a series of major competition prizes and began a top-level international career. She has said that some of her interpretations are influenced by Georgian folk music.

Buniatishvili was born in the Black Sea port city of Batumi on June 21, 1987. Her older sister Gvantsa is also a pianist, and the two have sometimes performed together. Khatia took up the piano at age three and at six appeared in concert with the Tbilisi Chamber Orchestra. Moving to the Georgian capital, Buniatishvili studied at the Tbilisi Central Music School with Tengiz Amiredjibi and took summer classes with pianist Michel Sogny. At a competition in Tbilisi in 2003, she was heard by pianist and pedagogue Oleg Maisenberg, who urged her to move to Vienna and study with him at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst. The move paid off: by the late 2000s decade, Buniatishvili was winning major prizes like those at the Horowitz International Competition for Young Pianists and the Artur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition. Aided by fluency in Georgian, Russian, German, French, and English, Buniatishvili toured widely. She has performed concertos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, among other top ensembles. As a recitalist, she made her debut at New York's Carnegie Hall in 2008. A frequent guest at festivals, she has appeared at the Verbier Festival, Progetto Martha Argerich, and Chamber Music Festival Lockenhaus, among others. As a chamber player, Buniatishvili has collaborated with the likes of violinists Renaud Capuçon, Gidon Kremer, and Lisa Batiashvili.

Buniatishvili's international renown comes in large part from her recordings. She was signed to the Sony Classical label and released her debut album, Khatia Buniatishvili Plays Franz Liszt, in 2011. Her 2012 release, Chopin, won the Echo Klassik Young Artists' Award. Buniatishvili has remained on Sony's roster, recording mostly core virtuoso 19th and early 20th century repertory. In 2020, she released the recital Labyrinth, featuring an eclectic program ranging from Bach to Philip Glass and Serge Gainsbourg. Buniatishvili lives in Paris. ~ James Manheim