LONG BIO

Praised for “spirited” (Boston Globe) performances that are “vigorous and passionate” (New York Times), Qing Jiang has emerged as a versatile musician equally known as a performer, teacher, and contemporary music advocate.  She has given concerts in Alice Tully Hall, Weill Hall, Jordan Hall, Snape Maltings Hall in the United Kingdom, and Shenzhen Poly Theater in China, and she has been a soloist with the Britten-Pears Orchestra under legendary conductor and composer Oliver Knussen, as well as with the Lanzhou Symphony under revered Chinese conductor Zushan Bian.  Jiang has performed with the Shanghai, Parker, and Jasper string quartets, as well as with Itzhak Perlman, Donald Weilerstein, Anthony Marwood, Joel Krosnick, and many other leading musicians.  Highlights of the 22-23 season include “Dreamed Landscapes” CD tour in Germany, China, and New Zealand, concert with the Aeolus String Quartet, and artist residencies at Tianjin Juilliard in China and Victoria University of Wellington.

A dynamic chamber musician, Jiang is a faculty artist member of the Kneisel Hall Festival in Maine, where she collaborates with many leading musicians and pedagogues, and teaches students from the world’s top conservatories.  Jiang previously maintained longstanding relationships with the Yellow Barn festival, appearing as both a faculty artist and fellow, and the Britten-Pears Festival where she performed in numerous chamber, solo, and contemporary settings. Other festival appearances include Music@Menlo, Ravinia’s Steans Institute, Interlochen, Garth Newel Music Center, the Perlman Music Program, and the Aspen festival where she was a winner of the concerto competition.  As Duo ING, Jiang and violinist Ying Xue have collaborated closely for many years, appearing in Jordan Hall, Carnegie Hall, Yellow Barn, and elsewhere, and in 2016, Jiang performed on a six-city tour in China with esteemed chamber musicians Laurie Smukler, Natasha Brofsky, and Roger Tapping.

Since her student days performing with the New Juilliard and the Aspen percussion ensembles, Jiang has remained a devoted advocate of contemporary music, championing the music of living and lesser-known composers, and exploring keen programming connections between old and new works.  Jiang has worked directly with Brett Dean, Jennifer Higdon, Oliver Knussen, Jörg Widmann, Lei Liang, and Eric Nathan to prepare performances of their work, and her debut album “Dreamed Landscapes” (Albany) features recordings of works by Thomas Adès and Daniel Temkin. Jiang wrote her doctoral thesis on Debussy’s seminal Etudes and their subsequent influence on virtuosic composing in the 20th & 21st centuries; she has given multiple performances of her “Debussy the Virtuoso” program, pairing Debussy’s etudes with those of Abrahamsen, Ligeti, Perle, Rakowski, along with new commissions and premieres by composer Zhou Tian and Colin Mathews. Jiang has also performed many contemporary solo and chamber works by George Crumb, Sean Shepherd, Tonia Ko, Shulamit Ran, Freya Waley-Cohen, Jonathan Harvey, Elliot Carter, and many others.

Outside the concert hall, Jiang is devoted to teaching and community music outreach.  She has appeared as a guest artist, lecturer, and clinician at many universities in the U.S. and abroad, and her festival and private students are now immersed in professional careers or studies at top conservatories. Previously taught at New England Conservatory, the NEC Preparatory School, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Yellow Barn Young Artist Program, Jiang currently is an Associate Professor of Music at Bucknell University. She integrates scholarship, performance, and outreach into a larger liberal arts curriculum.  Directing the Bucknell Piano Series, coordinating the “On the Rise” student series at the Weis Center, and consistently organizing community outreach concerts as central components of performance and chamber studies at Bucknell, Jiang and her students actively use music as a tool of community engagement, emphasizing access to high-quality classical music.  For many years, Jiang has similarly focused on music as a tool of social justice, curating recitals of under-represented composers, crafting engaging family concerts, and giving high-level performances for charity and in nursing homes and veterans shelters in NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and elsewhere.

A native of Zhenjiang, China, Jiang began studying piano at age three with her mother, and later with Shuxing Zhen. After winning several competitions in her native country, she gave her American debut at age 17, as a Chinese delegate of the Tempe Sister-Cities Program in Arizona.  Backstage after her recital, she was offered a full-scholarship to study at Arizona State University with Caio Pagano, where she graduated summa cum laude.  Jiang subsequently completed her Masters at Juilliard with Robert McDonald, and her Doctorate at New England Conservatory with Patricia Zander and Wha-kyung Byun.  She was a recipient of the 2005 Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts Scholarship (one of ten national winners in the arts, and the first Chinese recipient of the award), and she was also a finalist for the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. She currently lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania with her husband, Daniel, and their young daughter Kate.