Hsing-ay Hsu
Since making her stage debut at age 4, Chinese pianist Hsing-ay Hsu (“Sing-I Shoo”) has performed at such notable venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and abroad in Asia and Europe.
A Steinway Artist, Hsu is winner of the William Kapell International Piano Competition silver medal, the Ima Hogg National Competition First Prize, the prestigious Juilliard William Petschek Recital Award, a McCrane Foundation Artist Grant, a Paul & Daisy Soros Graduate Fellowship Award, and a Gilmore Young Artist Award, among others. She was also named a US Presidential Scholar of the Arts by President Clinton at the White House, and a “2011 Pathmaker” by Denver Post.
A versatile concerto soloist performing Bach to Barber, she is described by the Washington Post as full of “power, authority, and self-assurance.” Concerto collaborations include the Houston Symphony Orchestra as first-prize winner of the Ima Hogg National Competition, the Baltimore Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, Pacific Symphony (CA), Colorado Springs, Florida West Coast, Fort Collins, New Jersey, Waterbury(CT), China National, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Xiamen orchestras. Television and radio feature broadcasts include Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion Live from Tanglewood (for a 10,000+ live audience members and 3.9 million broadcast audience), NPR’s Performance Today with Martin Goldsmith, TCI cablevision’s Grand Piano Recital (CA), CPR’s Colorado Spotlight, China Central National TV, Hong Kong Phoenix TV and Danish National Radio. She has recorded CD/DVD’s for Pacific Records, Albany Records, and Nutmeg Press labels.
An advocate of new music, she has given numerous world premieres including Ezra Laderman’s Piano Sonata No.3 and Beshert; Ned Rorem’s Aftermath (2002) for baritone and piano trio; Daniel Kellogg’s scarlet thread at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and his Momentum, which she commissioned for the 1998 Gilmore International Keyboard Festival; as well as Du MingXin’s Piano Concerto No.3 at the Gulangyu International Piano Festival and National Tour. Chamber music appearances include Carnegie Weill Hall, Bargemusic in New York, the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Gardner Museum in Boston, the Detroit Art Museum, Denmark’s Viborg Hall, Taiwan’s Novel Hall, and a 2007 all-stars gala in Hong Kong for the 10th anniversary of the reunification. Recent projects include the ongoing multi-media recital China through the Lens of Piano Music, co-directing/performing in the George Crumb at 80 Music Festival and producing/performing the Olivier Messiaen Centennial series.
Born in Beijing, Hsu studied piano with her parents and her uncle Fei-Ping Hsu, and later with Herbert Stessin at Juilliard and Claude Frank at Yale. She also trained in the fellowship programs at the Tanglewood Music Center, Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute, the Aldeburgh Britten-Pears Programme (UK), the Aspen Music Festival, and abroad.
Hsu has served as the Artistic Director for Pendulum New Music Series at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has taught piano for the University of Colorado Boulder, Ohio University, University of Northern Colorado, Metro State University, and has lectured for University of Denver Enrichment, the Denver Art Museum, and the DAMTA Lecture Series. She presents original Conscious ListeningTM seminars to give audiences and pianists a broader perspective on the art of performance. An active educator, teacher with prize-winning students, speaker, and adjudicator, her teaching honors include the 2010 NFMC Ouida Keck Award, and she is currently the College Faculty Forum Chair for CSMTA.
Hsu resides in Colorado with her husband, composer Daniel Kellogg, and one daughter. Her concert schedule and recordings are available at www.hsingayhsu.com.