Jessie Chang appeared at the Blossom Festival with The Cleveland Orchestra playing Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in E-flat major, with her duo-partner and husband, Jahja Ling, in August 2005 to great acclaim.

 

Ms. Chang is admired for her beautiful tone, virtuosic technique, and individual personality. She first discovered her love for the piano when she was four years old just before entering the Yamaha Music School in Taipei, Taiwan. Later, Ms. Chang made her TV debut, appearing on the Taiwan Central Television when she was ten years old. Five years later, she made her concerto debut with the California State University Orchestra, performing Mozart’s A major Concerto, No.23, K.488.

Jessie Chang graduated with a Master’s Degree in Piano Performance with Constance Keene from the Manhattan School of Music in 2001. She received scholarships to attend the Manhattan School of Music from the Reachout Committee of the Los Angeles Music Center, the Young Musicians Foundation, and the Manhattan School of Music. Her previous teachers include Milton Stern and Yin Yin Huang, and she has worked closely with renowned artists such as Menahem Pressler, Herbert Stessin, Oxana Yablonskaya, and Bernard Segall.

In both her undergraduate and graduate commencement ceremonies at the Manhattan School of Music, Ms. Chang was the recipient of the best female pianist. She has also received top honors in more than thirty distinguished piano competitions of national and international stature, including First Prizes in: the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, the Music Teachers Association of California State Solo Competition, the Los Angeles Liszt Competition, the Southern California Junior Bach Festival, and the Chinese Talent Search. The Grand Prize was awarded to Ms. Chang in the Music Teachers Association of California Young Artists Guild, and additional top honors were received in the Los Angeles Music Center Spotlight Competition, the IBLA International Competition, and the International Young Artists Piano Competition (featuring Chinese music). Ms. Chang has the distinguished honor of being the first person to have won four gold medals at the US Open Music Competition in Berkeley, CA (in the categories for Bach, Chopin, Sight Reading, and Overall).

Among the highlights of her career, Ms. Chang performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in C minor, No.3 with The Florida Orchestra, Mozart Piano Concerto in G Major, No. 17, K. 453 with the Malaysian Philharmonic and Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn, Op. 56a at Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium. Being an active chamber musician, Ms. Chang has collaborated with well-known musicians such as William Preucil and Frank Cohen, as well as with several principals of the San Diego Symphony. She has also been featured in solo piano recitals in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, New York, and Sicily, Italy.