Gerard Willems, born Gerardus Maria Willems on August 19, 1946 in Tilburg, Netherlands, is a classical pianist and teacher who migrated to Australia at age 12. He studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music under Gordon Watson. Willems won the Queen Victoria Piano Competition and returned to Sydney in 1981 to teach at the conservatorium until 2008. He founded the piano trio Mozartrois, recording the complete Mozart Piano Trios for the bicentenary of Mozart's death in 1991. Willems gained recognition with his recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, released by ABC Classics between 1998 and 2000, which won successive ARIA Music Awards in 1999 and 2000. He was named the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II Music Scholar in 2001 and awarded a Centenary Medal for services to music in 2003, as well as being appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2012.
