Fei-Fei Comes to The Center For The Arts

Chinese pianist Fei-Fei comes to Pepperdine University's Raitt Recital Hall at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 23, 2018 at the Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts as the first Recital Series performer of the 2018-2019 season.

Tickets, starting at $28 for adults and $10 for full-time Pepperdine students, are sold out for this performance, but those interested may call the box office at (310) 506-4522 to be put on the waiting list. For more information, please visit arts.pepperdine.edu.

Her program includes Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 18 in D Major, K. 576; Schumann's Kinderszenen, Op. 15; Liebermann's Gargoyles, Op. 29; Rachmaninoff's Moments Musicaux, Op.16; and Chopin's Andante spianato et Grande polonaise.

Praised for her "bountiful gifts and passionate immersion into the music she touches" (The Plain Dealer), pianist Fei-Fei is a winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition and a top finalist at the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She continues to build a reputation for her poetic interpretations, charming audiences with her "passion, piquancy, and tenderness" (Dallas Morning News) both in the US and internationally, including her native China.

Her burgeoning career includes a number of prominent concerto engagements in 2018-19, highlighted by a Cliburn Laureates concert with the Fort Worth Symphony and her Carnegie Hall/Stern Auditorium debut with the award-winning New York Youth Symphony (followed by a tour of Spain with the NYYS). These follow 2017-18 featured performances with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Long Beach Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra at the Bard Music Festival.

Fei-Fei's busy 2018-19 recital itinerary features US performances from coast to coast-from Chico Performances at Cal State Chico, and Old Town Temecula Theatre to East Coast series such as the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, Brooks Center for the Arts at Clemson University, and Hamilton College Performing Arts Series in Clinton, NY.

Fei-Fei was showcased prominently as a Cliburn finalist in the documentary film, Virtuosity, about the 2013 Cliburn Competition, which premiered on PBS in August 2015, and she has also been featured numerous times on New York's WQXR radio.

Additional career concerto highlights in the US include the Fort Worth Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, Spokane Symphony, Corpus Christi Symphony, Austin Symphony, Denver Philharmonic, Anchorage Symphony, Youngstown Symphony, and the Juilliard Orchestra. Internationally, she has performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Germany's Baden-Baden Philharmonic, and in China with the Shanxi and Shenzhen Symphony Orchestras. In December 2016, she performed the world premiere of Shaosheng Li's piano concerto Behind the Clouds with the China National Symphony at Beijing Concert Hall. She has worked with such prominent conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Michael Stern, Jeffrey Kahane, Carl St. Clair, Leon Botstein, Randall Craig Fleisher, John Giordano, Yongyan Hu, and En Shao.

Fei-Fei has performed in recital at Alice Tully Hall as the winner of Juilliard's 33rd Annual William Petschek Recital Award. Other notable recent recitals in the US include her Weill Recital Hall debut at Carnegie Hall, Gilmore Rising Stars (Kalamazoo, MI), the Smithsonian American Museum in DC, SUNY Purchase Performing Arts Center and The Cliburn's spring 2015 Chopin Festival, and in Europe at the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid, Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall and the Louvre.

She is a member of the Aletheia Piano Trio, which debuted at the Kennedy Center in February 2014 as part of its Conservatory Project, and performs across the US and in Asia. Deeply committed to sharing her joy for music and connecting with communities, Fei-Fei also engages students and community audiences through frequent school and outreach concerts and master classes.

Born in Shenzhen, China, Fei-Fei began piano lessons at the age of 5. She moved to New York to study at The Juilliard School, where she earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees under the guidance of Yoheved Kaplinsky.

The Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts at Pepperdine University provides high-quality activities for over 50,000 people from over 1,000 zip codes annually through performances, rehearsals, museum exhibitions, and master classes. Located on Pepperdine's breathtaking Malibu campus overlooking the Pacific, the Center serves as a hub for the arts, uniquely linking professional guest artists with Pepperdine students as well as patrons from surrounding Southern California communities. Facilities include the 450-seat Smothers Theatre, the 118-seat Raitt Recital Hall, the "black box" Helen E. Lindhurst Theatre, and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art.

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