Yuja Wang

About

Yuja Wang (Chinese: 王羽佳; pinyin: Wáng Yǔjiā; born February 10, 1987) is a Chinese and American pianist. She began learning piano at the age of six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
By age 21, she was already an internationally recognized concert pianist and signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Wang currently lives in New York City.

Wang comes from an artistic family of Hui ethnicity. Her mother is a dancer and her father is a percussionist. Both live in Beijing.
Wang’s mother initially hoped her daughter would pursue dance as a career. As a child, however, Wang often amused herself by idly pressing the keys of the family’s old piano, a wedding gift to her parents, which sparked her early interest in playing the instrument. She later joked that she was “too lazy” and much preferred “sitting on the piano bench”. Wang began learning the piano at age six. At age seven, she began studies at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music. Her early teachers included Zhou Guangren, Ling Yuan, and other renowned piano pedagogues in China. At age eleven, Wang entered…