Vika

Vika (Viktoriya Yermolyeva - born November 2, 1978) is a Ukrainian pianist currently living in Iceland. She started as a classical pianist and won several international piano competitions but she later became known through her Youtube portal under the nickname 'vkgoeswild' for creating piano covers of famous rock and metal songs. After the success, thanks to her Youtube videos, she officially switched her career from classical to rock music. After studying at the Tchaikovsky Music Academy in Ukraine (2000), she completed her graduate studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar, and the International Piano Academy "Incontri col Maestro" in Imola, Italy with the famous pianist Lazar Berman. Further studies took her to the Codarts Academy of Music and Modern Dance, at Rotterdam Conservatory, Netherlands. In the early classical phase of her career, she won a variety of piano competitions, such as 1st Prize at "Filippo Trevisan" competition for Piano Interpretation in Italy, winner of The Grachtenfestival 2005 Amsterdam, 1st Prize at 35th International Competition "Vincenzo Bellini" in Italy, 1st Prize at 20th International Piano Competition "Citta di Marsala", 1st Prize at International Piano Competition “Citta' Di Trani”, 1st Prize at 4th Sigismund Thalberg International Competition, and the Grand Prix at 9th Pierre Lantier International Music Competition in duet with V. Dmitriev (flute) in France. Since 2006 she refocused her career on playing rock music, concentrating on heavy metal covers by the whole gamut of famous metal bands. Her works have millions of views on YouTube and her subscribers number over 200,000. She also occasionally covers classical orchestral compositions as well as music from sound tracks that are not otherwise available in sheet music. On January 29, 2011 she performed her first live rock concert in Reykjavík, Iceland (VIGGIE & VIKA: Live in Iceland) collaborating with drummer Brian Viglione. Official website: http://www.vkgoeswild.com/ Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.