Pianist Chengcheng Ma to Make Carnegie Hall Debut

Forte International Group presents pianist Chengcheng Ma in an evening celebrating cross-cultural dialogue through piano music on Tuesday, October 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM at his Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall.

This appearance follows his full-house New York City solo recital debut at Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center, in January 2026. The program features new works and established masterworks for solo piano and two pianos. Ma is joined by distinguished guest pianists Boaz Sharon, Rodney Lister, EunAe Lee, and Yimiao Fang. The program includes two world premieres by Stella Sung and Rodney Lister, the U.S. premiere of Nansong Huang's Reflections on Dunhuang, and works by Chen Yi, Mary Lou Williams, Prokofiev/Pletnev.

The performance takes place at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, New York, NY. Tickets start at $30, with student and senior discount tickets available at the box office. Visit www.carnegiehall.org for tickets. 

PROGRAM

Nansong Huang; Reflections on Dunhuang, Piano Suite for solo piano (U.S. premiere)
Chengcheng Ma, piano

Mary Lou Williams; Offertory Meditation
Chengcheng Ma, piano

Rodney Lister; My Time with the Cholmondeleys for two pianos (commissioned work; world premiere)
Rodney Lister and Chengcheng Ma, pianos

Stella Sung; The Persistence of Time for two pianos (commissioned work; world premiere)
EunAe Lee and Chengcheng Ma, pianos

Chen Yi; China West Suite for two pianos
Yimiao Fang and Chengcheng Ma, pianos

Sergei Prokofiev, arranged by Mikhail Pletnev; Cinderella Suite for two pianos
Boaz Sharon and Chengcheng Ma, pianos

ABOUT CHENGCHENG MA

Pianist Chengcheng Ma has appeared as a concert pianist, concerto soloist, orchestral pianist, collaborative artist, and interpreter of contemporary music, with performances across the United States, Europe, and Asia. He has performed with orchestras including Sinfonia da Camera under Maestro Ian Hobson, Brookline Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Andrew Altenbach, Boston University Symphony Orchestra under Maestro James Burton, and Hebei Province Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Peng Tuo. His concerto repertoire includes major works by Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Brahms, and John Corigliano.

Ma has performed as an orchestral pianist and celesta player with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra at Jordan Hall and the Boston International Symphony Orchestra. He has worked closely with composers Rodney Lister and Ketty Nez and has participated in numerous world and regional premieres. He is a featured pianist on 21 choral works on Rodney Lister’s 2025 Métier album. His work also includes jazz performance and research, particularly Mary Lou Williams and the Harlem stride tradition.

Critical acclaim for his playing includes Jon Sobel of Blogcritics: “Chengcheng Ma has the expressive depth to match the sheer physical prowess much of his active repertoire demands,” and David Wright of New York Classical Review: “Driving fiercely ahead throughout, Ma negotiated the shifting patterns and syncopations with aplomb.”

Recent highlights include being actively involved in commissioning and premiering new works, a full-house New York City solo recital debut at Merkin Hall in January 2026, recital and masterclass at the University of Mary, solo recital at First Church Boston, orchestral appearances with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, and Festival Manager and performer at the Ian Hobson International Piano Festival in Puerto Rico. www.chengchengma.com.

ABOUT THE GUEST ARTISTS

Boaz Sharon, Professor of Piano at Boston University, is an internationally known pianist, recording artist and international competition juror. Born in Israel, Boaz Sharon studied in Brussels with pianist Stefan Askenase - great interpreter of Chopin and Mozart. He was first prize winner and gold medalist at the Jaén International Piano Competition, Spain. For many years he was the artistic director of the Prague International Piano masterclasses and the Sichuan International Piano Festival in Chengdu, China. His recording on the Nonesuch/Asylum/Elektra label was named one of the 11 best recordings of the year by Newsweek Magazine and was featured in The New York Times (“Beautifully recorded and played”) and reviewed in the Washington Post. Sharon teaches annually on the artist faculty of the University of Illinois Summer International Piano Festival and the Hobson International Piano Festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico and is Honorary Guest Professor at China Conservatory in Beijing. www.bsharon.com.

Rodney Lister received his early musical training at the Blair School of Music in Nashville, Tennessee. He was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music (Bachelor of Music degree, with honors) and at Brandeis University (Master of Fine Arts and Ph. D. degrees) from 1975 to 1977. In between his stay at those two institutions, he lived in England, where he studied privately with Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He subsequently was a member of Davies’s composition seminar at the Dartington Hall Summer School of Music. He was a Bernstein fellow at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. Mr. Lister was co-founder and co-director of Music Here & Now, a concert series of new music by Boston-area composers at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1971–1973), and from 1976 until 1982 was music coordinator of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. He was a founding member of the Music Production Company in 1982. He is currently on the faculty of Boston University and the Preparatory School of the New England Conservatory, where he teaches composition, theory, and chamber music and is co-director of the annual contemporary music festival. He is also a music tutor at Pforzheimer House, Harvard University, and is on the faculty of Greenwood Music Camp. His 2025 Métier choral album Of Mere Being, features Chengcheng Ma as pianist on 21 works. He will join Ma in the world premiere of his commissioned two-piano work at this concert. www.rodneylister.com.

Dr. EunAe Lee is an award-winning Korean pianist. Throughout her career, she has delivered deeply engaging solo recitals and appeared with leading orchestras including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, Phoenix Symphony, and Hilton Head Symphony. Her performances have been featured on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series and the Pianoforte Foundation Series, both broadcast live on Chicago’s WFMT 98.7 FM, where she was praised for her captivating stage presence and poetic phrasing. www,eunaelee.com.

Yimiao Fang is an active classical pianist, piano educator and harpsichordist who has given performances and lectures around the world. Ms. Fang is a current doctoral candidate in piano performance at The Hartt School, and graduated from Manhattan School of Music in New York City for both her undergraduate and master’s degrees in piano performance. She has received three international piano competition awards and was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall) three times in 2024, having won two first prize awards and an honorable mention in competition. www.yimiaofang.com.

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS

Stella Sung served as the first Composer-in-Residence for the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra (2008-2011), and was one of the five composers nationally selected for a "Music Alive" award, a three-year award that allowed Dr. Sung to serve as Composer-In-Residence for the Dayton Performing Arts Alliance (2013-16), sponsored by New Music USA, the League of American Orchestras, ASCAP, the Aaron Copland Fund, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Dr. Sung is Composer-in-Residence for Dance Alive National Ballet (Gainesville, FL). More at www.stellasung.com.

Chen Yi is a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries. Over the course of the past four decades, Ms. Chen has developed an extremely fluid bicultural musical vocabulary that has informed virtually everything she has written, whether it is a composition for solo piano, wind band, or an ensemble comprised of traditional instruments from her native country - all instrumentations for which she has created a substantial output. https://conservatory.umkc.edu/profiles/yi-chen.html

Nansong Huang started playing the piano when he was four years old. At the age of ten, he was accepted to The Middle School Attached to The Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. In 2009, he moved to the United States and was admitted to the pre-college division of Juilliard School of Music. He earned his B.A. from the renowned Columbia-Juilliard Exchange program with degrees in Political Science and Music, and then pursued a Master of Music degree at Yale School of Music. Nansong graduated with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at Northwestern University, and he is currently a full-time member of the piano faculty at Xi’an Conservatory of Music. https://www.steinway.com/artists/huang-nansong

Mary Lou Williams (1910–1981) was one of the most influential American jazz pianists, composers, and arrangers of the twentieth century. Active for more than five decades, she wrote hundreds of compositions and contributed significantly to the development of jazz from swing through bebop and beyond. She came to prominence as pianist and principal composer-arranger for Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, and later wrote or arranged music for artists including Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie. In her later years, Williams also composed major sacred works, including Black Christ of the Andes and Mary Lou’s Mass. Duke Ellington famously described her as “perpetually contemporary.” Mary Lou Williams Foundation: https://www.marylouwilliams.foundation

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