American pianist Clayton Stephenson’s love for music is immediately apparent in his joyous charisma onstage, expressive power, and natural ease at the instrument. Hailed for “extraordinary narrative and poetic gifts” and interpretations that are “fresh, incisive and characterfully alive” (Gramophone), he is committed to making an impact on the world through his music-making.

Growing up in New York City, Clayton started piano lessons at age 7 and was accepted into the Juilliard Outreach Music Advancement Program for underprivileged children the next year, where he attended numerous student recitals and fell in love with music. At the age of 10 he advanced to Juilliard’s elite Pre-College program with the help of his teacher, Beth Nam. At Juilliard he studied with Matti Raekallio, Hung-Kuang Chen and Ernest Barretta. Clayton practiced on a synthesizer at home until he found an old upright piano on the street that an elementary school had thrown away; that would become his practice piano for the next six years, until the Lang Lang Foundation donated a new piano to him when he was 17.

He credits the generous support of community programs with providing him musical inspiration and resources along the way. As he describes it, the “3rd Street Music School jump-started my music education; the Young People’s Choir taught me phrasing and voicing; the Juilliard Outreach Music Advancement Program introduced me to formal and rigorous piano training, which enabled me to get into Juilliard Pre-College; the Morningside Music Bridge validated my talent and elevated my self-confidence; the Boy’s Club of New York exposed me to jazz; and the Lang Lang Foundation brought me to stages worldwide and transformed me from a piano student to a young artist.”

Recent and upcoming highlights of Clayton’s burgeoning career include appearances with the Calgary Philharmonic, Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Fort Worth, Louisville, Lansing and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras; as well as recitals at the Phillips Collection Concert Series in Washington, DC, Foundation Louis Vuitton Auditorium in Paris, Bad Kissinger Sommer Festival and BeethovenFest in Germany, Colour of Music Festival, Ravinia Festival and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.  He has been featured on NPR, WUOL, and WQXR, and appeared in the “GRAMMY® Salute to Classical Music” Concert at Carnegie’s Stern Auditorium.

He now studies in the Harvard-NEC Dual Degree Program, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics at Harvard and a master’s degree in piano performance at the New England Conservatory under Wha Kyung Byun. And his accolades along the way have been numerous – in addition to being the first Black finalist at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022, he was named a 2022 Gilmore Young Artist, as well as a 2017 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a Young Scholar of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. He also received a jury discretionary award at the 2015 Cliburn International Junior Piano Competition and Festival.

Among his generation of concert artists, pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recitals and with symphony orchestras.

He was the first student in the Peabody Conservatory of Music’s history to receive diplomas in three performance areas (piano, violin and conducting). He also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Johns Hopkins, was granted an honorary doctorate from Illinois Wesleyan University, and won both the Naumburg International Piano Competition and the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Pratt has played in performances across the US, including at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, the NJ Performing Arts Center, and the White House. His many orchestral performances include appearances with the New York Philharmonic; Minnesota Orchestra; and the Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, National, Detroit, and New Jersey symphonies among many others. Summer festival engagements include appearances at Ravinia, Blossom, Wolftrap, Caramoor, and Aspen as well as the Hollywood Bowl. Internationally, Mr. Pratt has toured Japan four times and performed in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Israel, Columbia, and South Africa.

Recent and upcoming appearances include recital engagements in Baltimore, La Jolla, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Ravinia, Lewes, Delaware, Duke University, and Carnegie Hall for the Naumburg Foundation as well as with the orchestras of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, North Carolina, Utah, Richmond, Grand Rapids, Memphis, Fresno, Winston-Salem, New Mexico, Rockford, IL and Springfield, OH. He also serves on the faculty of the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina where he coaches chamber music, teaches individual pianists, and performs chamber music and concertos with the festival orchestra.

An experienced conductor, Mr. Pratt has conducted programs with the Toledo, New Mexico, Vancouver WA, Winston-Salem, Santa Fe, and Prince George County symphonies; the Northwest Sinfonietta; the Concertante di Chicago; and several orchestras in Japan.

Mr. Pratt is frequently invited to participate on international competition juries, such as the Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Israel, the Cleveland International Piano Competition, Minnesota e-Competition, the Unisa International Piano Competition in International Competition for Young Pianists in Memory of Vladimir Horowitz in the Ukraine.

Awadagin Pratt is currently a Professor of Piano at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He also served as the Artistic Director of the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati and is currently the Artistic Director of the Art of the Piano Festival at CCM.

Hailed by the critics as Monsieur 100,000 Volts, pianist Andreas Boyde’s performances have electrified audiences worldwide. His recitals in renowned concert venues and appearances as soloist with such orchestras as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Radio Orchestra, the Dresdner Philharmonie, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, the Zürich Kammerorchester, the Miami Symphony Orchestra, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Hallé Orchestra Manchester, the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, the Dresdner Sinfoniker, the London Mozart Players, the Berliner Symphoniker and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra have secured Boyde’s reputation as an esteemed performing artist.

Boyde has concertised internationally in Austria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, USA and Vietnam. Venues where he has appeared to acclaim include Berlin Philharmonie, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Royal Festival Hall and Wigmore Hall London, Cologne Philharmonic Hall, Zürich Tonhalle, Munich Herkulessaal, Symphony Hall Birmingham, Berlin Konzerthaus, Munich Philharmonic Hall, Hamburg Musikhalle, Teatro Municipal Santiago de Chile, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Prinzregenten Theatre and Pierpont Morgan Library New York.

For the season 2018/19, Andreas Boyde was Artist in Residence of the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt.

Boyde recorded the complete solo piano works by Johannes Brahms produced by OehmsClassics, the repertoire now being performed in a cycle. Boyde’s extensive CD recordings receive five star reviews from leading music magazines, praising his interpretations “a stroke of genius” (Fono Forum, Germany). He enjoys a close association with German radio established by frequent broadcasts and productions.

The sought-after pianist’s wide-ranging repertoire encompasses all major areas of the piano literature. Also committed to contemporary music he gave the European premiere of Paul Schoenfield’s Piano Concerto Four Parables, as well as the first performance of John Pickard’s Piano Concerto, which is dedicated to him. Boyde’s musicological interests are demonstrated in his reconstruction of the ‘Schubert’ Variations by Robert Schumann, now published by Hofmeister Leipzig. It is a work that has enjoyed great international acclaim since its 2000 premiere in New York by Andreas Boyde at the Pierpont Morgan Library. He is also Henle Artist and Contributor.

In 2017, Andreas Boyde’s orchestral version of Schumann’s Waldszenen was premiered by the Dresdner Kapellsolisten at the new Kulturpalast Dresden hall, the work now being published by Edition Peters.

Andreas Boyde was born in Oschatz, Germany, where he entered the Book of Honour in 2012. He studied with Christa Holzweißig and Amadeus Webersinke in Dresden and subsequently with James Gibb in London at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. His mentor and promoter Malcolm Frager also proved a major influence.

Andreas Boyde lives in London.

“A compelling, sparkling virtuoso” (Boston Music Intelligencer), pianist Michelle Cann made her orchestral debut at age fourteen and has since performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

A champion of the music of Florence Price, Ms. Cann performed the New York City premiere of the composer’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestra in July 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin in February 2021, which the Philadelphia Inquirer called “exquisite.” She has also performed Price’s works for solo piano and chamber ensemble for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Detroit, and the New World Symphony, among other presenters.

Highlights of her 2021–22 season include debut performances with the Atlanta, Detroit, and St. Louis symphony orchestras, as well as her Canadian concert debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. She also receives the 2022 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization, and the 2022 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. Embracing a dual role as both performer and pedagogue, her season includes teaching residencies at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and the National Conference of the Music Teachers National Association.

Ms. Cann regularly appears in recital and as a chamber musician throughout the U.S., China, and South Korea. Notable venues include the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Barbican in London with members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Ms. Cann regularly performs duo recitals with her sister, pianist Kimberly Cann; together their “sheer verve and evident passion is something to behold” (Mountain Xpress).

Ms. Cann has appeared as cohost and collaborative pianist with NPR’s From The Top, collaborating with actor/conductor Damon Gupton, violinist Leila Josefowicz, and violinist and MacArthur Fellow Vijay Gupta. She has also been featured on WRTI-FM and WHYY-TV in Philadelphia. Her summer festival appearances have included the Taos Chamber Music Festival, Yellow Barn, Perlman Music Program, Music Academy of the West, Geneva Music Festival, and Pianofest in the Hamptons, where she serves as artist in residence.

Ms. Cann has won top prizes in state, national, and international competitions including the International Russian Music Piano Competition, the Blount Slawson Young Artists Competition, and the Wideman International Piano Competition. In 2019 she served as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s MAC Music Innovator in recognition of her role as an African-American classical musician who embodies artistry, innovation, and a commitment to education and community engagement.

Ms. Cann manifests this commitment through her activities in Philadelphia and as part of touring engagements around the globe. She has served as the director of two children’s choruses in the El Sistema-inspired program Play On Philly and was among the first class of ArtistYear fellows at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she worked with community partners City Year, Teach for America, and AmeriCorps to provide arts education and access to underserved communities in Philadelphia. In 2019 she served on the faculty of the Sphinx Performance Academy during its inaugural year at the Juilliard School.

Ms. Cann holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Paul Schenly and Dr. Daniel Shapiro, and an Artist’s Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Robert McDonald.

Ms. Cann served as a collaborative staff pianist at the Curtis Institute of Music for several years. She joined the faculty in 2020 as the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies.

One of the most sought-after soloists in his generation of young American musicians, the pianist Orion Weiss has performed with the major American orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic. His deeply felt and exceptionally crafted performances go far beyond his technical mastery and have won him worldwide acclaim.

His 2018-19 season sees him beginning that season with the Lucerne Festival and ending with the Minnesota Orchestra, with performances for the Denver Friends of Chamber Music, the University of Iowa, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Albany Symphony, the Kennedy Center’s Fortas Series, the 92nd Street Y, and the Broad Stage in between. In 2017-18 Orion performed Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, toured with James Ehnes, and soloed with twelve orchestras around the United States. Other highlights of recent seasons include his third performance with the Chicago Symphony, a North American tour with the world-famous Salzburg Marionette Theater in a performance of Debussy’s La Boîte à Joujoux, the release of his recording of Christopher Rouse’s Seeing, and recordings of the complete Gershwin works for piano and orchestra with his longtime collaborators the Buffalo Philharmonic and JoAnn Falletta.

Named the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year in September 2010, in the summer of 2011 Weiss made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood as a last-minute replacement for Leon Fleisher. In recent seasons, he has also performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and in duo summer concerts with the New York Philharmonic at both Lincoln Center and the Bravo! Vail Valley Festival. In 2005, he toured Israel with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Itzhak Perlman.

Also known for his affinity and enthusiasm for chamber music, Weiss performs regularly with the violinists Augustin Hadelich, William Hagen, Benjamin Beilman, James Ehnes, and Arnaud Sussman; the pianist Shai Wosner; and the cellist Julie Albers; and the Ariel, Parker, and Pacifica Quartets. As a recitalist and chamber musician, Weiss has appeared across the U.S. at venues and festivals including Lincoln Center, the Ravinia Festival, Sheldon Concert Hall, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, Chamber Music Northwest, the Bard Music Festival, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, the Kennedy Center, and Spivey Hall. He won the 2005 William Petschek Recital Award at Juilliard, and made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall that April. Also in 2005 he made his European debut in a recital at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. He was a member of the Chamber Music Society Two program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 2002-2004, which included his appearance in the opening concert of the Society’s 2002-2003 season at Alice Tully Hall performing Ravel’s La Valse with Shai Wosner.

Weiss’s impressive list of awards includesthe Gilmore Young Artist Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Gina Bachauer Scholarship at the Juilliard School and the Mieczyslaw Munz Scholarship. A native of Lyndhurst, OH, Weiss attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Paul Schenly, Daniel Shapiro, Sergei Babayan, Kathryn Brown, and Edith Reed. In February of 1999, Weiss made his Cleveland Orchestra debut performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. In March 1999, with less than 24 hours’ notice, Weiss stepped in to replace André Watts for a performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He was immediately invited to return to the Orchestra for a performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto in October 1999. In 2004, he graduated from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Emanuel Ax.

Claire Huangci, the child prodigy of the time, whose extraordinary virtuosity astonished the piano world earlier, has grown into a mature artist. Especially with Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, her creative interpretations are fresh and convincing. (Jury-Statement, 1st prize of the Geza Anda Competition 2018)

The young American pianist of Chinese descent, winner of the first prize and Mozart Prize at the 2018 Geza Anda Competition, has succeeded in establishing herself as a highly respected artist, captivating audiences with her “radiant virtuosity, artistic sensitivity, keen interactive sense and subtle auditory dramaturgy” (Salzburger Nachrichten).

Claire Huangci began her international career at the age of nine with grants, concert performances, and prizes, becoming the youngest participant to receive a second prize at the International ARD Music Competition in 2011. Only in her later teenage years did she finally feel more and more that this instrument was to be her vocation. She received significant input from her teachers Eleanor Sokoloff and Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia before studying under Arie Vardi at the University of Music, Drama, and Media in Hanover. She has assisted Professor Vardi since her graduation in spring 2016.

Chopin’s music gave Claire Huangci her artistic breakthrough when she won first prizes at the Chopin Competitions in Darmstadt in 2009, as well as in Miami in 2010. She has since proved her great versatility with an unusually broad repertoire, which includes a large number of contemporary works. Claire Huangci has performed in solo recitals and as a partner with international orchestras such as the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (under Sir Roger Norrington), Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, Münchner Kammerorchester, China Philharmonic Orchestra and Vancouver, Santa Fe and Moscow Radio Symphonies at international concert venues that include the Carnegie Hall, Wiener Konzerthaus, Konzerthaus Berlin, Gasteig Munich, Gewandhaus Leipzig, la Salle Cortot, Oji Hall Tokyo and the Symphony Hall in Osaka. She has also made guest appearances at festivals such as the Kissinger Sommer, Verbier Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival, and the Schwetzinger SWR Festival.

After a busy last season with highlights including solo debuts at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Klavier Festival Ruhr, and a tour through China with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Cornelius Meister, she begins the 18/19 season with concerts with the Bern Symphony orchestra under Mario Venzago. Further appearances will lead her to the Vienna Konzerthaus, Franz Liszt Akademie Budapest, Zurich Tonhalle, Tokyo Suntory Hall, and Washington DC Smithsonian Institute.

After the releases of her debut CD with solo works of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev and her prize-winning double album of Scarlatti sonatas, (German Record Critics‘ Award and Gramophone Editors Choice) she released a celebrating recording of the complete Chopin nocturnes in Spring 2017.

“Do we need another recording of Chopin’s Nocturnes? Not really! But when one hears this brand new double-CD from Claire Huangci, the answer is yes!” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) Just in time for the start of the new season, Claire will release her fourth solo album with Berlin Classics/Edel featuring the complete preludes of Sergey Rachmaninov.

Pianist Terrence Wilson has established a reputation as one of today’s most gifted instrumentalists. In the United States he has appeared with the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Washington, DC (National Symphony), San Francisco, St. Louis, and with the orchestras of Cleveland, Minnesota, and Philadelphia and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Among the conductors with whom he has worked are Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Neeme Jarvi, Jesus Lopez-Cobos, Robert Spano, Yuri Temirkanov, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and Gunther Herbig.

Abroad, Terrence Wilson has played concerti with such ensembles as the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra in Switzerland, the Malaysian Philharmonic, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In 2005, he toured Spain with the Baltimore Symphony with Yuri Temirkanov conducting.

An active recitalist, Terrence Wilson made his New York City recital debut at the 92nd Street Y, and his Washington, DC recital debut at the Kennedy Center. In Europe, he has given recitals at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, and at the Louvre in Paris. He has given recitals at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, NY, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, and for the La Jolla Chamber Music Society. An avid chamber musician, he performs regularly with the Ritz Chamber Players. Festival appearances include the Blossom Festival, Tanglewood, and Wolf Trap.

During the 2017-2018 season, Terrence Wilson appears as guest soloist with (among others) the Alabama Symphony and makes his debut with the Portland Symphony Orchestra. He also makes his debut with the Richmond Symphony in performances of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. Other highlights of the season include a return appearance with the New Jersey Symphony, chamber music performances with the Ritz Chamber Players in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as recitals of all of Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-Tableaux, op. 33 & 39 in advance of a recording project of these sets.

Among the projects for the 2018-2019 season is the commission of a new solo piano work by American composer Michael Daugherty.

Terrence Wilson has received numerous awards and prizes, including the SONY ES Award for Musical Excellence, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the Juilliard Petschek Award. He has also been featured on several radio and television broadcasts, including NPR’s Performance Today, WQXR radio in New York, and programs on the BRAVO Network, the Arts & Entertainment Network, and public television. In 2011, Wilson was nominated for a GRAMMY in the category of “Best Instrumental Soloist With an Orchestra” for his (world premiere) recording with the Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero of Michael Daugherty’s Deus ex Machina for piano and orchestra – which was written for Wilson in 2007.

Terrence Wilson is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky. He has also enjoyed the invaluable mentorship of the Romanian pianist Zitta Zohar. A native of the Bronx, he resides in Montclair, New Jersey.

Praised for her “bountiful gifts and passionate immersion into the music she touches” (The Plain Dealer), Chinese pianist Fei-Fei is a winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition and a top finalist at the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She continues to build a reputation for her poetic interpretations, charming audiences with her “passion, piquancy and tenderness” and “winning stage presence” (Dallas Morning News).

Her burgeoning career includes a number of prominent concerto engagements in the 2017-18 season, including performances with the American Symphony Orchestra at the Bard Music Festival, the Buffalo Philharmonic, Long Beach Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Denver Philharmonic, Knoxville Symphony, and a return engagement with California’s Pacific Symphony for a special performance celebrating the Chinese New Year.  This season, Fei-Fei also performs in recital in ten states across the United States as well as nineteen cities in China.

In addition to her summer 2017 performances at the Bard Music Festival, recent festival highlights include Bravo! Vail Valley, Music at Menlo, Busan International Music Festival (Korea), Nantucket Musical Arts Society and the Highlands Chamber Music, Music Mountain and Lake George Music Festivals.

Fei-Fei was showcased prominently as a Cliburn finalist in the documentary film, Virtuosity, about the 2013 Cliburn Competition, which premiered on PBS in August 2015, and she has also been featured numerous times on New York’s WQXR radio.

Career concerto highlights in the US include the Fort Worth Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Corpus Christi Symphony, Austin Symphony, Anchorage Symphony, Youngstown Symphony, and the Juilliard Orchestra.  Internationally, she has performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Germany’s Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock, and in China with the Shanxi and Shenzhen Symphony Orchestras.  In December 2016, she performed the world premiere of Shaosheng Li’s piano concerto Behind the Clouds with the China National Symphony at Beijing Concert Hall.  She has worked with such prominent conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Michael Stern, Jeffrey Kahane, Carl St. Clair, Leon Botstein, Randall Craig Fleisher, John Giordano, Yongyan Hu, and En Shao.

Fei-Fei has performed in recital at Alice Tully Hall as the winner of Juilliard’s 33rd Annual William Petschek Recital Award.  Other notable recent recitals in the US include her Weill Recital Hall debut at Carnegie Hall, Gilmore Rising Stars (Kalamazoo, MI), the Smithsonian American Museum in DC, SUNY Purchase Performing Arts Center and The Cliburn’s spring 2015 Chopin Festival, and in Europe at the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid, Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall and the Louvre.

She is a member of the Aletheia Piano Trio, which debuted at the Kennedy Center in February 2014 as part of its Conservatory Project, and performs across the US and in Asia. Deeply committed to sharing her joy for music and connecting with communities, Fei-Fei also engages students and community audiences through frequent school and outreach concerts and master classes.

Born in Shenzhen, China, Fei-Fei began piano lessons at the age of 5. She moved to New York to study at The Juilliard School, where she earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees under the guidance of Yoheved Kaplinsky.

Blessed with “poetic and sensitive pianism” (Washington Post) and a “wondrous sense of color” (San Francisco Classical Voice), pianist Joyce Yang captivates audiences with her virtuosity, lyricism, and interpretive sensitivity. As a Van Cliburn International Piano Competition silver medalist and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, Yang showcases her colorful musical personality in solo recitals and collaborations with the world’s top orchestras and chamber musicians.

Yang came to international attention in 2005 when she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The youngest contestant at 19 years old, she took home two additional awards: the Steven De Groote Memorial Award for Best Performance of Chamber Music (with the Takàcs Quartet) and the Beverley Taylor Smith Award for Best Performance of a New Work.

Since her spectacular debut, she has blossomed into an “astonishing artist” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). She has performed as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, the Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Sydney, and Toronto symphony orchestras, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the BBC Philharmonic (among many others), working with such distinguished conductors as Edo de Waart, Lorin Maazel, James Conlon, Manfred Honeck, Jacques Lacombe, Leonard Slatkin, David Robertson, Bramwell Tovey, Peter Oundjian, and Jaap van Zweden. In recital, Yang has taken the stage at New York’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum; the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Chicago’s Symphony Hall; and Zurich’s Tonhalle.

Highlights of Yang’s 2016/17 season include her debuts with the Long Beach Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra and San Diego Symphony, recitals in Anchorage, Beverly Hills, Cincinnati, Denver, Nashville, Seattle, and at Spivey Hall in Georgia, and concerts with her frequent duo partner, violinist Augustin Hadelich, in Dallas, New York City, Saint Paul, San Francisco, and more. She will also perform at Chamber Music International in Dallas with the Alexander String Quartet, with whom she has recorded the Brahms and Schumann Piano Quintets. Fall marks the release of her first collaboration with Hadelich for Avie Records, and the world premiere recording of Michael Torke’s Piano Concerto, created expressly for her and commissioned by the Albany Symphony. Additional appearances showcasing her vast repertoire include performances as orchestral soloist in Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas. In Summer 2016 she appeared at the festivals of Aspen, Brevard, Lake Tahoe, Steamboat Springs and Sun Valley.

Recent season highlights include Yang’s debut with New Jersey Symphony on the occasion of Jacques Lacombe’s last concert as Music Director, multiple returns to the New York Philharmonic, Royal Flemish Philharmonic and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin debuts, UK debut in the Cambridge International Piano Series, Montreal debut with I Musici de Montréal with Jean-Marie Zeitouni, and Pittsburgh Symphony debut playing Schumann’s Concerto under music director Manfred Honeck. She concluded a five-year Rachmaninoff cycle with de Waart and the Milwaukee Symphony, to which she brought “an enormous palette of colors, and tremendous emotional depth” (Milwaukee Sentinel Journal); joined the Takács Quartet for Dvořák in Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series; and impressed the New York Times with her “vivid and beautiful playing” of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with members of the Emerson String Quartet at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center.

In 2014, Yang “demonstrated impressive gifts” (New York Times) with a trio of album releases: her second solo disc for Avie Records, Wild Dreams, on which she plays Schumann, Bartók, Hindemith, Rachmaninoff, and arrangements by Earl Wild; a pairing of the Brahms and Schumann Piano Quintets with the Alexander Quartet; and a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Denmark’s Odense Symphony Orchestra that International Record Review called “hugely enjoyable, beautifully shaped … a performance that marks her out as an enormous talent.” Of her 2011 debut album for Avie Records, Collage, featuring works by Scarlatti, Liebermann, Debussy, Currier, and Schumann, Gramophone praised her “imaginative programming” and “beautifully atmospheric playing.”

Born in 1986 in Seoul, South Korea, Yang received her first piano lesson from her aunt at the age of four. She quickly took to the instrument, which she received as a birthday present, and over the next few years won several national piano competitions in her native country. By the age of ten, she had entered the School of Music at the Korea National University of Arts, and went on to make a number of concerto and recital appearances in Seoul and Daejeon. In 1997, Yang moved to the United States to begin studies at the pre-college division of the Juilliard School with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky. During her first year at Juilliard, Yang won the pre-college division Concerto Competition, resulting in a performance of Haydn’s Keyboard Concerto in D with the Juilliard Pre-College Chamber Orchestra. After winning the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenfield Student Competition, she performed Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with that orchestra at just twelve years old. She graduated from Juilliard with special honor as the recipient of the school’s 2010 Arthur Rubinstein Prize, and in 2011 she won its 30th Annual William A. Petschek Piano Recital Award.

Yang made her celebrated New York Philharmonic debut with Maazel at Avery Fisher Hall in November 2006 and performed on the orchestra’s tour of Asia, making a triumphant return to her hometown of Seoul, South Korea. Subsequent appearances with the Philharmonic included the opening night of the Leonard Bernstein Festival in September 2008, at the special request of Maazel in his final season as music director. The New York Times pronounced her performance in Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety a “knockout.”

Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music, a documentary about the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She is a Steinway artist.

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Photo credit: KT Kim

Silver medalist in the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition and winner of the prestigious XIV Concours International Grand Prix Animato 2014 Paris, George Li (黎卓宇) is regarded as one of the world’s most talented and creative young pianists. His astonishing technique, distinctive tonal quality, and exceptional musicality have earned him consistent critical acclaim (New York Times, Washington Post, International Piano Magazine, Toronto Star, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Music Intelligencer) and enthusiastic audience response worldwide for his solo recitals, orchestral collaborations, and chamber music performances.