NYC-based pianist and educator Fifi Zhang has performed in venues throughout New York City, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre, Joyce Theater, Steinway Hall and the German Consulate, as well as concert halls in Finland, Spain, South Korea, and Poland. She has a keen interest in contemporary classical music and has worked closely with numerous composers, including Frederic Rzewski, John Harbison, and Gabriela Lena Frank. She also enjoys working with dancers and has collaborated with members of the New York City Ballet and Malpaso Dance Company.
At age eleven, Fifi made her debut with the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic playing the Saint-Saëns G minor concerto, as the national grand prize winner of the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic Concerto Competition, and is one of a handful of musicians to have won both the Junior (2008) and Senior (2010) divisions of the national MTNA (Music Teachers National Association) high school competition. In 2016, she was a finalist in the Juilliard Concerto Competition. Fifi has spent summers performing at Tanglewood Music Festival, the Banff Centre, Sarasota Music Festival, Chautauqua Institute, and New Paltz Piano Summer.
An alumnus of the Columbia-Juilliard Exchange, Fifi holds a BA in History from Columbia University and an MM in Piano Performance from Juilliard. She is also a graduate of Mannes School of Music. Former teachers include Ursula Oppens, Pavlina Dokovska, Matti Raekallio, and Julian Martin.
Fifi is currently a doctoral candidate at CUNY Graduate Center, where she is working on a critical examination of classical music performance through a phenomenological lens. She is also on faculty at Hunter College teaching music history, as a recipient of the Graduate Center Fellowship.
