Pianist Joyce Yang joins 21C Media Group roster

21C Media Group is proud to announce that it now represents pianist Joyce Yang. The firm will be handling public relations for Yang, who was the silver medalist (and the youngest contestant) at the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and who was also awarded, in 2010 at the age of 24, an Avery Fisher Career Grant – one of classical music’s most prestigious accolades. Joyce Yang’s 2012-2013 season features debuts with the Toronto and Detroit Symphonies under Peter Oundjian; abroad, she makes her German debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, led by James Conlon, and returns to Australia for a concert with the Sydney Symphony. Also this season, Yang continues her Rachmaninoff cycle with Edo de Waart and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, this time performing the Russian master’s Piano Concerto No. 1. As a chamber musician, Yang performs concerts this season with the Takács Quartet, Modigliani Quartet, and violinist Augustin Hadelich, along with solo recitals in Cambridge (UK debut), Melbourne, and Vancouver, Des Moines, San Antonio, and Honolulu. Yang’s season follows a busy summer of performances at the Aspen Music Festival, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival – where she joined members of the Emerson String Quartet for Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet, prompting the New York Times to praise Yang for her “vivid and beautiful playing.”
Since her spectacular debut at the Van Cliburn Competition, Yang has blossomed into an “astonishing artist” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), and she continues to appear with orchestras around the world. She has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Houston Symphony, and BBC Philharmonic, working with such distinguished conductors as Edo de Waart, Lorin Maazel, James Conlon, Leonard Slatkin, David Robertson, Bramwell Tovey and Jaap van Zweden. In recital, Yang has taken the stage at New York’s Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Chicago’s Symphony Hall; and Zurich’s Tonhalle.
In November 2011, Yang released Collage, her first solo album for Avie Records, featuring piano works by Scarlatti, Liebermann, Debussy, Currier, and Schumann. Gramophone praised her “imaginative programming” and “beautifully atmospheric playing.”  American Record Guide called Collage “an outstanding first recording” and a “display of her wide-ranging talent.” 
“The first impression Yang gives is of the pleasure she takes in the purely physical act of playing the piano,” reported the Washington Post in its review of her Wolf Trap recital this past spring. “She’s not showy. Her attention to detail and clarity is as impressive as her agility, balance and velocity, but it was only as the music unfolded that her commitment to thought-out musical ideas also became evident. … Yang, who was a silver medalist in the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, is also a gifted public speaker, and her comments about the music and her approach to it were terrific.”
 
Yang made her celebrated New York Philharmonic debut with Lorin Maazel at Avery Fisher Hall in November 2006 and performed on the orchestra’s tour of Asia, making a triumphant return to her hometown, Seoul, South Korea. She has appeared with the Philharmonic frequently, including the opening night of the Leonard Bernstein Festival in 2008, at the special request of Lorin Maazel in his final season as music director. The New York Times called Yang’s performance in Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety a “knock-out.”
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Yang received her first piano lesson at age four from her aunt. 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 age ten, she had entered the School of Music at the Korea National University of Arts, and subsequently she made 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 in New York with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky. During her first year at Juilliard, she won its pre-college division Concerto Competition, resulting in a performance of the Haydn Concerto in D major with the Juilliard Pre-College Chamber Orchestra. After winning the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenfield Competition, she performed Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with that orchestra when she was just twelve. She graduated from Juilliard with special honor as the recipient of the school’s 2010 Arthur Rubinstein Prize, and in 2011 she won the school’s 30th annual William A. Petschek Piano Recital Award.
Joyce Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music, a documentary about the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and she is a frequent guest on American Public Media’s nationally syndicated radio program Performance Today. A Steinway artist, she currently resides in New York City.
Critical Acclaim for Joyce Yang:

“Yang makes an astonishing sound at the piano. … The result was a breathtaking performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
 
“Vivid and beautiful playing” — New York Times
 

“Her attention to detail and clarity is as impressive as her agility, balance and velocity.” — Washington Post
 
“The sound is bold and modern, yet restrained. The precision of the fingerwork is astounding.” — BBC Music Magazine
 
“[Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto is] a music obstacle course, with wipeout threatened at every turn.  Yang made it sound relatively easy.  She’s got what it takes to perform the piece.” — Orange County Register
 
“de Waart conducted Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, with Joyce Yang, Silver Medalist of the 12th Van Cliburn International Competition, as the soloist. … She played with a polished, pearly evenness that was remarkable for its ease up and down the keyboard.” — Los Angeles Times
 
Mr. Maazel led a taut performance [of Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety”], and the orchestra played this dark-hued music vividly and with a sharp edge. But the standout was Joyce Yang, who gave a knockout performance of the alternately poetic, fiery and occasionally jazz-tinged piano line.” — New York Times
 
“Sunday’s snazzy performance found Conlon and his soloist, the brilliant young South Korean pianist Joyce Yang, fully inside the music’s manic mood-swings – brooding deliberation giving way to exuberant flights of honkytonk jazz.” — Chicago Tribune
 
Upcoming Engagements – Joyce Yang
 
Nov 9, 2012                  
Honolulu, HI
Hawaii Music Teachers Association
University of Hawaii at Manoa; Orvis Auditorium
Recital
 
Nov 12, 2012                
Hawaii, HI
Chamber Music Hawaii
Doris Duke Theatre, Honolulu Museum of Art
With Galliard String Quartet
Poulenc: Sextet for Piano & Wind Quintet, Op. 100
Schumann: Quintet for Piano & Strings in E-flat major, Op. 44
 
Nov 13, 2012    
Hilo, HI
Chamber Music Hawaii
Hilo Performing Arts Center
With Galliard String Quartet
Schumann: Quintet for Piano & Strings in E-flat major, Op. 44
 
Nov 17, 2012    
Asheville, NC
Asheville Symphony Orchestra
Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
Conductor: Daniel Meyer
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
 
Nov 29, 30, 2012
Detroit, MI
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Orchestra Hall
Conductor: Peter Oundjian
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2
 
Dec 7, 2012                  
Dallas, TX
Chamber Music International
SMU Caruth Auditorium
Bartók: Out of Doors
Dvorák: Quintet for Piano & Strings No. 2 in A major
 
Dec 8, 2012                  
Richardson, TX
Chamber Music International
St. Barnabas Presbyterian Church
Bartók: Out of Doors
Dvorák: Quintet for Piano & Strings No. 2 in A major
 
Jan 11, 12, 13, 2013      
Sarasota, FL
Sarasota Orchestra
Holley Hall
Conductor: Anu Tali
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor”
 
Jan 16, 2013
Aliso Viejo, CA
Soka University of America
Soka Performing Arts Center
With Takács Quartet
 
Jan 19, 2013
Durham, NC
Duke Performances        
Duke University, Reynolds Industries Theater
Recital
 
Jan 22, 2013
San Antonio, TX
Tuesday Musical Club
Laurel Heights United Methodist Church
Recital
 
Jan. 24, 2013
Waco, TX
Baylor University School of Music
Recital
 
Jan 30, 2013
Cambridge, UK
Hazard/Chase Recital Series
Recital: Beethoven, Chopin, Bartók, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin
 
Feb 4, 2013
Berlin, Germany
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Brandenburg Gate
Conductor: James Conlon
Bernstein: Symphony No. 2 “The Age of Anxiety”
 
Feb 9, 2013                  
Fort Myers, FL
Southwest Florida Symphony
Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Center
Conductor: Josep Caballé-Domenech
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor”          
 
Feb 20, 2013     
Mamaroneck, NY
Singer Hall
With Augustin Hadelich
 
Feb 22, 2013                 
New York, NY
Rockefeller University
With Augustin Hadelich
 
Feb 24, 2013                 
Vancouver, Canada
Vancouver Recital Society
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
With Augustin Hadelich
 
Mar 1, 2, 3, 2013           
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
Uihlein Hall
Conductor: Edo de Waart
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-Sharp minor
 
Mar 14, 15, 16, 2013      
Sydney, Australia
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Charles Olivieri-Monroe
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1
 
Mar 18, 2013                 
Sydney, Australia
Sydney Symphony Presents
Sydney Opera House
Recital
Bartók: Out of Doors
Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op. 88
Rachmaninoff: Wild: Dreams, Op. 38, No. 5
Rachmaninoff: The Little Island, Op. 14, No.2
Rachmaninoff: Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14
Rachmaninoff: Sonata No. 2 in B-flat major, Op.36
 
Mar 22, 2013                 
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne Recital Centre
Recital
Bartók: Out of Doors
Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op. 88
Rachmaninoff: Wild: Dreams, Op. 38, No. 5
Rachmaninoff: The Little Island, Op. 14, No.2
Rachmaninoff: Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14
Rachmaninoff: Sonata No. 2 in B-flat major, Op.36
 
Apr 13, 2013                 
Corpus Christi, TX
Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra
Performing Arts Center at Texas A&M University
Conductor: John Giordano
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor”
 
May 5, 7, 2013  
San Rafael, CA
Marin Symphony
Marin Center
Conductor: Alasdair Neale
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major
Matthews: Selected Preludes (from Debussy)
 
May 9, 2013
Red Oak, IA
Wilson Performing Arts Center
Recital
 
May 11, 12, 2013          
Des Moines, IA
Des Moines Symphony
Civic Center of Greater Des Moines
Conductor: Joseph Giunta
Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16
 
May 31, 2013                
Birmingham, AL
Alabama Symphony Orchestra
Alys Robinson Stephens Performing Arts Center, Jemison Concert Hall
Conductor: Daniel Meyer
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
 
 
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