Pianist And Composer Taige Wang To Headline Musicon Season 5 Opening Concert In New York

Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the MusicON Music Festival will present 16-year-old rising star pianist and composer Taige Wang as its inaugural Artist-in-Residence. In this landmark role, Wang will compose a new chamber work for MusicON annually and present the festival's opening concert each season. The festival's fifth season will open on October 3, 2026, at 12:30 PM with Wang presenting the Opening Concert at The Blanc in New York City.

The Season 5 Opening Concert features a selection of classical masterworks and contemporary compositions. The solo piano portion includes Domenico Scarlatti's Keyboard Sonatas, selections from Enrique Granados's Goyescas, and Franz Liszt's virtuosic Réminiscences de Norma. The program also presents three contemporary works: the world premiere of Wang's original chamber composition Trois nouvelles for violin, clarinet, bassoon, and piano; Wang's four-hand piano arrangement of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue; and MusicON Artistic Director Yiming Wu's On a Gate-Tower at Yuzhou for tenor and piano. Featured guest artists include tenor James Kil, violinist Chanhee Jin, clarinetist Michael Sun, bassoonist Felix Zhou, and pianist Andrew Huang.

This marks Wang's third consecutive year collaborating with MusicON. As the youngest composer specially invited by the festival, he previously premiered his commissioned chamber works NAN Trio (2024) and Variations on a Theme from Bizet's Carmen for piano and pipa (2025) at the National Opera Center. Distinguished figures from the New York classical music community will attend the opening concert, including Wang's composition teacher Bruce Adolphe, Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Concerts at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Helen Cha-Pyo, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the New Jersey Youth Symphony. For MusicON, naming Wang as its first Artist-in-Residence marks a milestone collaboration, opening a new chapter in deepening partnerships with rising musical leaders.

Born in 2010, Taige Wang is a YoungArts Winner with Distinction (2026), a Lang Lang International Music Foundation Young Scholar, and was named a Steinway Young Artist at age 13. He currently studies piano at The Juilliard School Pre-College Division under Prof. Veda Kaplinsky. Wang began playing piano and gave his debut performance at age four, made his live national television debut on China Central Television at five, and gave his first solo recital at age seven by invitation from Steinway & Sons. He has received numerous international piano awards, including First Prize, Best Concert Etude, and Best Hungarian Rhapsody at the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition (2021); Grand Prize at the Chicago International Music Competition (2021, 2022); First Prize and Best Mendelssohn Prize at the Yamaha Piano E-Competition (2022); First Prize, Best Contemporary Music Award, and Olga Kern Foundation Aspiration Award at the Rosalyn Tureck International Bach Competition (2022); 3rd Prize as the youngest competitor at the Thomas and Evon Cooper International Piano Competition (2023); and Quarterfinalist as the youngest competitor at the Cliburn Junior International Piano Competition (2023). In 2026, he is the youngest participant selected to compete in the fall cycles of both the Tbilisi International Piano Competition (Ages 16-33) and the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition (Ages 16-31).

In the realm of composition, Wang has earned numerous accolades: First Place at the Composer Today State (CA) Contest (2022), Finalist at the National Young Composers Challenge (2023), Honorable Mention at the Robert Avalon International Competition for Composers (2023), Grand Prize at the Sempre Musick Composition Competition (2024), and Finalist (2025) and Semifinalist (2026) in the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Competition. His chamber piece Chopin vs. Chopin 2.0, commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, premiered at Alice Tully Hall alongside members of the Calidore String Quartet and Wang himself. His creative portfolio also includes the piano trio Toothbrush Rhapsody, solo piano work Fantasy on Puccini's Turandot, a six-hand piano arrangement of Rossini's The Barber of Seville, and a four-hand arrangement combining music from Die Fledermaus and La Traviata performed for WildAid at Asia Society.

As a performer, Wang has appeared with leading ensembles including The Cleveland Orchestra and the Aspen Festival Orchestra, and served as a featured soloist on the New Jersey Youth Symphony's 2026 European tour. He appeared on NPR's From the Top in 2021 and was invited to perform at its annual gala in 2022; he has also been featured by NPR, CBS, Medici.tv, and the national television networks of Poland and Hungary. His performance venues include the Great Wall, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Cleveland's Severance Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, and the Royal Palace of Gödöllő in Hungary. In 2022, he gave a solo recital in London under the patronage of HRH The Duke of Kent; in 2025, he was selected for the Siemens Arts Program, presenting a solo performance at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall; in 2026, he performed alongside violinist Ray Chen representing the Lang Lang International Music Foundation.