On Saturday’s live broadcast and Facebook Live, we feature 17-year-old pianist Alice Zhang of Vernon Hills, Illinois in a program of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and William Bolcom.
Alice is a senior at Vernon Hills High School, and she started piano lessons at age four with Brenda Huang. She also studies piano with Eduardus Halim, the Sascha Gorodnitzki Chair of Piano Study at New York University and Dr. Matthew Hagle, a piano faculty member at the Music Institute of Chicago.
Alice has performed in venues throughout the Chicago area, including Symphony Center, Ravinia’s Gordon Bennett Hall, the Chicago Fine Arts Building, Pick-Staiger Concert Hall at Northwestern University, and the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium in the Chicago Public Library. In July 2018, she performed the Chopin Concerto No.1 in E minor with the MostArts Festival Orchestra at the Miller Theater of Alfred University in New York as the returning Grand Prize Winner of the 2017 Young Pianist Competition at the MostArts Festival.
In addition to the MostArts Festival, Alice has won many competitions. She was named a merit winner in the 2019 National YoungArts Competition; the Overall Winner in the junior division of the 2015 National Walgreens Concerto Competition; the finalist in the 2015 Crain-Maling Foundation Chicago Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition; the Second Prize Winner in the 2015Young Artist Category at the Second Gershwin International Music Competition in New York City; and the Second Prize Winner in the junior division of the 2014 Emilio del Rosari Piano Concerto Competition.
Alice is also an accomplished chamber musician. As the pianist of both the Jayus Trio and the Odysseus Trio, she received Honorable Mention in the 2017 and 2018 National Discover Chamber Music Competitions. Both groups also advanced to the semifinals of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition at the University of Notre Dame in 2017 and 2018. Her clarinet-piano trio was chosen as a semi-finalist at the M-Prize Chamber Music Competition at the University of Michigan in 2016. In 2017, her duet group won third place at the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) competition in Baltimore, Maryland.
In an effort to support local communities, she has been an active performer in retirement facilities, community clubs, and schools in the Chicago area. Besides piano, she also plays violin and is a member in her high school orchestra.
