Kálman Dráft was born in 1955 and started to play the piano at the age of four. Six years later he entered the Béla Bartók Conservatory in Budapest and at the age of fourteen became a student at the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy in the same city. He spent two years as a pupil of Bella Davidova at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and in 1976 won the major award in the Liszt-Bartók Piano Competition. Since 1977 he has been a member of the teaching staff of the Liszt Academy.
