Angela Cheng
Consistently praised for her brilliant technique, tonal beauty, and superb musicianship, Canadian pianist Angela Cheng is one of her country’s national treasures. In addition to regular guest appearances with virtually every orchestra in Canada, she has performed with the symphonies of Saint Louis, Houston, Indianapolis, Colorado, Utah, San Diego, and Jacksonville, as well as the philharmonic orchestras of Buffalo, Louisiana, Rhode Island, London, Israel, and Minas Gerais in Brazil.
Recent performances include a debut with the Fort Worth Symphony, performing Rachmaninoff’s “Variations on a Theme of Paganini,” under the baton of Robert Spano, and a return to the Vancouver Symphony, performing Ravel’s Concerto in G with Otto Tausk. Next season will include the Boulder Philharmonic, Newfoundland Symphony, Okanagan Symphony, Saskatoon Symphony, Saguenay Symphony, and the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas.
As a recitalist, soloist and chamber musician, Cheng has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., New York’s 92nd Street Y, and Wigmore Hall in London. A member of the Zukerman Trio and Chamber Players, she has also appeared at Vienna’s Musikverein, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colon, Mariinsky Concert Hall in St. Petersburg, and the Sydney Opera House. Festival appearances include Verbier, Edinburgh, Miyazaki, Stars of the White Nights in St. Petersburg, and the George Enescu Festival in Romania.
Cheng also appears regularly on concert series throughout the United States and Canada and has collaborated with the Takács, Colorado, and Vogler quartets. North American festival performances include Banff, Chautauqua, Colorado, Great Lakes Chamber Music, Vancouver, Toronto, and the Festival International de Lanaudière in Quebec.
She is regularly invited to give master classes at schools throughout North America and in Asia and has appeared at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, Taichung University in Taiwan, Indiana University, University of Michigan and the University of Texas. She has also served on the jury of many competitions, including the Cleveland International Piano Competition, Esther Honens International Piano Competition, Montreal International Piano Competition, and the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, among others.
Cheng was awarded the Gold Medal at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Masters Competition and was the first Canadian to win the prestigious Montreal International Piano Competition. She has also been honored with the Canada Council’s coveted Career Development Grant and the Medal of Excellence for outstanding interpretations of Mozart from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
A native of Hong Kong, Cheng studied extensively with Menahem Pressler at Indiana University and with Sascha Gorodnitzki at The Juilliard School. She is currently on the artist faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she was honored with the 2011-12 Excellence in Teaching Award.
Alvin Chow
Alvin Chow has appeared throughout North America and in Asia as an orchestral soloist and recitalist. In addition, he has performed extensively in duo-piano recitals with his wife, Angela Cheng, and his twin brother, Alan.
A native of Miami, Florida, he graduated summa cum laude and co-valedictorian at the University of Maryland, where he was a student of Nelita True. Chow received the Victor Herbert Prize in Piano upon graduation from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Sascha Gorodnitzki, and held the Joseph Battista Memorial Scholarship at Indiana University as a student of Menahem Pressler.
Chow was the first Fulbright College Visiting Artist in Piano at the University of Arkansas during 1987-88. He later taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Since 1999, he has been a member of the artist faculty at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he is currently chair of the Piano Department and the Ruth Strickland Gardner Professor of Music.
Chow has performed in major concert halls including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; Orchestra Hall in Chicago; Weill and Steinway Halls in New York City; and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
He has presented as recitalist in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Detroit, and Miami, and has appeared as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Pan-Asia Symphony in Hong Kong, and the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg, among others.
Timothy Brown
Award-winning American composer Timothy Brown is one of the most popular and widely performed composers for the piano of his generation. He has been influenced greatly by the Italian composer Ennio Morricone, and Timothy’s music is noted for its “immediate emotional impact” and its roots in the neo-romantic style of music composition. He has embedded traditional formal structural elements in his wide array of compositions which includes orchestral, ballet, choral, chamber works, and over three hundred publications written specifically for the piano for “pedagogical purposes.”
He was born in Middletown, Ohio and his early piano and music theory studies were with Rebecca Shoup Willhide. His undergraduate studies were at Bowling Green State University, and he later received his master’s degree from the University of North Texas where he studied piano with Adam Wodnicki and music composition with Newel Kay Brown. Later he was a recipient of a research fellowship from the Royal Holloway, University of London, where he pursued his post-graduate studies in music composition and orchestration with the English composer, Brian Lock. He later continued his research at the well-known Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Foundation in Rome, Italy.
Early in his career, Timothy was awarded the first prize at the (2000) Alienor International Harpsichord Composition Competition (Centaur records). His world premieres have included commissions by The Daniel Pearl Music Foundation, The Music Teachers National Association Collaborative Composer Commission (2015), The Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education, and The Carter Albrecht Foundation. Through an artistic partnership with “the balletfoundation for the XXI Century” he received five commissions for contemporary works for dance including the staging of “three contemporary ballets” including “The Happy Prince” which is based on the writings of Oscar Wilde. His music has been showcased at numerous venues throughout North America and Europe including the Mozarthaus Vienna, Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, the “Library of Congress Concert Series” in Washington D.C, the Spoleto Music Festival, and the Chapman University Symphony and Chorus. His most recent new Piano Concerto (2016), “The Classical Concerto for Piano and Orchestra” is written in the style of Prokofiev’s first symphony, Op. 25, “The Classical Symphony,” and was recently premiered by the Korean Concert Pianist, Hwa Jung Lee in the Dallas area. Timothy Brown is an exclusive composer/clinician for The FJH Music Company Inc., Ft. Lauderdale, Florida (ASCAP).