Pianist Jihye Chang enjoys a diverse career as a soloist, collaborator, educator, scholar, and advocate for new music in the United States and abroad. Her performances focus on the creative process of collaborating with living composers, curating programs that can connect to various audiences, and giving context to contemporary works.
She is a recipient of the Henry Kohn Award from the Tanglewood Music Center, an Honorary Fellowship from the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, the Aaron Copland Recording Grant, and first prize of the Mikhashoff International Pianist-Composer Competition. She has appeared as a soloist with the Brevard Music Center Sinfonietta, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Fargo Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, Wonjoo Philhamronic Orchestra, Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, and Virtuosi of Festival Internacionale de Musica in Recife (Brazil), among others. Since 2016 she has led more than 20 performances of her solo project “Continuum 88” – a solo project in which she programs masterworks of piano literature, focusing on specific genres such as etudes and variations each season, alongside newly commissioned works in the same genres by younger composers – in venues across the United States, South Korea, and Taiwan. She also appeared at the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth, Old First Church Concert Series of San Francisco, Blue Candlelight Music Series in Dallas, Nuevo Mundo Festival y Academia in Aruba, and Tuesday Concert Series at Seoul National University. Recently she led residencies both in person and online at Indiana University, UCLA, Rutgers University, Texas Christian University, and Tulane University, working with young composers and composition faculty members.
During the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020-2021, she launched an online collaborative project with 8 Boston-area composers, the “Boston Etudes Project,” with 8 online premieres of new etudes written for her. The Project culminated in a live performance with 5 additional etudes at Tufts University in February 2022. She also launched a hybrid concert series entitled “Jihye’s Salon,” in which audience from all over the world enjoyed livestreamed concerts at their own home while artists from various locations performed from their own home. Season II of Jihye’s Salon will be released in the fall 2022.
Chang’s recordings can be found on Albany, Centaur, Parma, and Sony Korea, and she has recently recorded “77 Canonic Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” by Nathan Lam. Her research has been focused on piano etudes, music by women composers, interdisciplinary outreach programs, and music by Korean composers. She expanded her interest on music by Korean composers into a new music theory course at Florida State University. She has presented several lectures focusing on music as a means to understand Korean culture at Seoul National University Alumni Association’s 2022 Summit, University of Cincinnati College of Music, University of East Maine, and Boston University.
Ms. Chang graduated from Seoul National University, and earned her Master’s and Doctorate degrees from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Chang is a faculty member at the Brevard Music Center and a core member of the Intersection Contemporary Ensemble. She has been a lecturer at Florida State University since 2012 and served there as a Visiting Assistant Professor in 2014-15. You can visit https://instagram.com/jihyechangpiano to see her passion on espresso, and listen to her online premieres and other performances on https://www.youtube.com/jihyechangpiano.
Language spoken : English