In 2018, he took up the post of Professor of Piano at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin in addition to the Kronberg Academy’s Sir András Schiff Performance Programme for Young Artists.

Gerstein was born in Voronezh in the former Soviet Union to a Russian Jewish family and began playing the piano at the age of two.

Though he formally studied classical piano, he also learned to play jazz by listening to his parents' record collection.

He continued his studies in Madrid with Dmitri Bashkirov at Queen Sofía College of Music and in Budapest with Ferenc Rados.

Kirill Gerstein made his major orchestral debut in September 2000 performing Brahms's Piano Concerto No.

[3][4] In January 2010, Gerstein was announced as the sixth recipient of the Gilmore Artist Award, which recognizes "extraordinary piano artistry" once every four years with a $300,000 prize.

Previous winners include Leif Ove Andsnes from Norway, Piotr Anderszewski from Poland, and Ingrid Fliter from Argentina.

2, with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin led by James Gaffigan, was honored with an ECHO Klassik Award as the "Concerto Recording of the Year.