Chengcheng Ma & Guest Artists at Carnegie Hall

Pianist Chengcheng Ma has appeared as a 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.

In addition to his solo career, Ma has been active as an orchestral pianist and celeste player, with engagements including the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, Boston University Symphony Orchestra, Boston International Symphony Orchestra, and Coro Allegro. Recent orchestral highlights include his appearance with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra at Jordan Hall, Boston, featuring the U.S. premiere of Diana Syrse’s Colección de Realidades, with the composer in attendance, as well as an encore performance with cellist Joshua Roman in Saint-Saëns’s The Swan. He also performed with the Boston International Symphony Orchestra at Cary Hall in Lexington, Massachusetts, in a program including Boston and New England premieres.

Ma has worked closely with contemporary composers and has been involved in numerous world and regional premieres, including works by Ketty Nez, Rodney Lister, Gabriela Lena Frank, Zhao Zhang, Diana Syrse, Xia Guan, Stella Sung, and Nansong Huang. In June 2025, Rodney Lister’s choral album OF MERE BEING was released on the Métier label, featuring Ma as pianist on 21 choral works performed with members of the Choir of the Church of the Advent under the direction of Maestro Mark Dwyer.

Ma also has an extensive background in jazz performance and research, with a focus on the traditions of J. P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Mary Lou Williams, Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, and Art Tatum. He participated in the HARLEM STRIDE PIANO 1921–1943 recording project and has presented lecture-recitals at Weatherford College and Gracepoint Media.

Recent engagements include serving as Festival Manager / Coordinator and Performer at the Ian Hobson International Piano Festival in Puerto Rico in May 2026, where he oversaw festival operations while also appearing as a performing artist. Other recent highlights include a masterclass and solo recital at the University of Mary, a solo recital at First Church Boston, orchestral performances with the Longwood Symphony Orchestra and Boston International Symphony Orchestra, and his New York City Debut Solo Recital at Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center. Upcoming highlights include his Carnegie Hall Debut Recital at Weill Recital Hall on October 13, 2026, featuring works by Prokofiev/Pletnev, Mary Lou Williams, Chen Yi, Stella Sung, Rodney Lister, and Nansong Huang, including world and U.S. premieres.

In addition to his performance career, Ma serves as Director of the Piano Jury for the Australian International Music Competition & Master Series Concert, North America Division, and as an Artist Jury Member for the Kairos International Music Competition.

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. His composition teachers, aside from Davies, have been Malcolm Peyton, Donald Martino, Harold Shapero, Arthur Berger, and Virgil Thomson. He has also studied piano with Enid Katahn, David Hagan, Robert Helps, and Patricia Zander.

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. Rodney Lister has received commissions, grants, and fellowships from the Berkshire Music Center, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, the Koussevitzky Music Foundation at the Library of Congress, the Fires of London, the Poets’ Theatre, the Virgil Thomson Foundation, the Preparatory School of the New England Conservatory, Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. His works have been performed at Tanglewood, the Library of Congress, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and in New York and London, among other places, by performers including Joel Smirnoff, Tammy Grimes, Phyllis Curtin, Jane Manning, Mary Thomas, Michael Finnissy, Kathleen Supove, Jane Struss, Boston Cecelia, the Blair Quartet, and the Fires of London. As a pianist, he has been involved in premieres, first US performances, first UK performances or first Boston performances of works by Virgil Thomson, Peter Maxwell Davies, Milton Babbitt, Michael Finnissy, Philip Grange, Lee Hyla, and Paul Bowles, among others. 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.

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 masters 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.

Ms. Fang won the Steinway & Sons Top Piano Teacher Award in NYC, and was the youngest judge of the Steinway & Sons National Piano Competition in Nanjing, China for two consecutive years. She was also the youngest judge of the GOCAA New York International Music Competition in NY. Ms. Fang is an Official Steinway Educational Partner in the U.S. She has been a piano teacher for New York Music and Arts in NYC, Steinway & Sons Piano School in Nanjing, China, and other locations. She is also a member of the China Association for Promoting Children’s Culture and Art – Youth Arts Education Committee and an officially registered teacher of the ABRSM Piano Exam (Beijing). Her featured piano solo concerts "Salute Classical Music with Youth" were exclusively covered by dozens of mainstream media outlets such as Xinhua News Agency, Sohu.com, Sina News, NetEase News, ifeng.com, China.com, and others.

Ms. Fang is active on the international stage. She has been invited to participate in the Europe Music Festival in Germany (2018), the New York Summit Music Festival (2017), the Italy International Music Festival (2016), and others, with scholarship. She has performed and given lectures in worldwide concert halls including Carnegie Hall in NYC, Greenfield Hall in NYC, Zhengzhou Grand Theater in Zhengzhou, China, Steinway Hall in Nanjing, China, and Saale Concert Hall in Halle, Germany.  

She is a currently student of Professor José Ramos Santana, who is the first prize winner of the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, the piano department chair at The Hartt School and a piano professor at New York University. She previously studied with Dr. Marc Silverman, prior chair of the Piano Department of Manhattan School of Music, Prof. Phillip Kawin of Manhattan School of Music, and the highly acclaimed pianist and professor of Central Conservatory of Music, Prof. Yunjie Chen.

In the past, she has been awarded many scholarships including the MSM Scholarship from Manhattan School of Music, Hartt DMA Talent/Honors Award, and the Graduate DEIJ (Diversity, Equity and Social Justice) Scholarship from University of Hartford, among others.

In 2021, Ms. Fang's piano masterclass and performance were featured activities for the Pearl River · Kayserburg International Youth Piano Competition Series held at the Zhengzhou Grand Theater. They received enthusiastic responses and were widely acclaimed.

During her more than decade-long piano teaching career, Ms. Fang’s students have won gold and silver awards in many international and Chinese piano competitions including: Melbourne International Music Competition, GOCAA New York International Piano Competition, International F. Liszt Piano Competition, GOCAA San Francisco International Piano Competition, Steinway & Sons National Youth Piano Competition, Mittag International Piano Competition, Olympic Piano Competition, China Art Festival, and Zhejiang Conservatory of Music Youth Art Festival Piano Show. Yimiao Fang has received outstanding piano instructor awards from these competitions, and her students are active across the world-wide stage. They have been invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in NYC, Steinway Hall in NYC, America’s National Opera Center in NYC, Chengdu City Music Hall in China, Beijing Radio and Television Station in China, Melbourne Music Festival in Australia, and Hannover School of Music, theatre and media, Germany. Additionally, her online piano students from around the world have achieved wonderful accomplishments including an offer for a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance at Nanjing University of Arts, winning some of the many awards mentioned above, and being invited to perform around the world.

Chén Yí 陈怡 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. She has also made significant contributions to the field of music education. Many of her students have been recognized around the world with national and international composition awards and professorships.

In addition to her work as a composer and educator, Dr. Chen has been a significant cultural ambassador who has introduced hundreds of new compositions and a large number of musicians from the East and the West to music and educational exchange programs in the U.S.A., the U.K., Germany, and many Asian countries. She has been a strong advocate for new music, American composers, Asian composers, and women in music.

Born in Guangzhou, China in 1953, she and her siblings began studying classical music at age three as their parents were lovers of the genre. She began learning on piano and at age four was introduced to violin. She memorized works by classical composers like Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky and was able to sing their compositions note for note. But during the Cultural Revolution, she was taken to a work camp in the countryside; she continued to play violin, but was only allowed to perform revolutionary songs. At age 17, she became concertmaster of the Peking Opera in Guangzhou. In 1978, Chen was admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing where she received a bachelor’s and master’s degree, the first woman in China ever to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in music composition from the institute. In addition, she spent summers studying Chinese folk music and considers this research to be an important part of her musical development.

In 1986, Chen Yi came to New York City to study composition with Chou Wen Chung and Mario Davidovsky at Columbia University where she received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. From 1996 to 1998, she taught on the composition faculty at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1998, she was appointed the Lorena Cravens/Millsap/Missouri Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory of Music and Dance in the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In 2001, she was the recipient of the Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. In 2006, she was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji (Four Seasons), a work commissioned by the Swiss Roche Foundation which was given its world premiere performance by the Cleveland Orchestra in Lucerne followed by a performance in New York’s Carnegie Hall. In 2006, Prof. Chen was appointed to a Cheung Kong Scholar Visiting Professorship at the Central Conservatory in Beijing by China’s Ministry of Education in 2006, where she established the first Beijing International Composition Workshop, and later to a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the Tianjin Conservatory. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters in 2019.

Chen Yi has served on the advisory or educational board of the Fromm Foundation, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Chamber Music America, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center, New Music USA, the American Composers Orchestra, the League of Composers/ISCM, the International Alliance of Women in Music, and the Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy. She has supported many composers, conductors, musicians (including dozens of excellent performers on Chinese traditional instruments), educators, and students through her tireless work over the past three decades. 

Chen Yi’s Ballad, Dance and Fantasy for cello and orchestra (2003) was performed by cellist Qin Liwei and the China National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Yongyan Hu during the opening concert of 2018 ISCM World New Music Days in Beijing. During that same festival, her 1999 composition Sparkle was performed by the American contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound in a 2018 arrangement for chamber orchestra by Stefan Freund. Chen Yi also served on the international jury for the 2021 ISCM World New Music Days in Shanghai and Nanning (which was unfortunately cancelled due to COVID-19 travel restrictions). Her earliest connection to the ISCM came very early in her career, back in 1989, when, at the recommendation of her teacher Chou Wen-chung (who was elected an Honorary Member of the ISCM in 1994), she was one of 20 international composers chosen to participate in a film series initiated by the ISCM in collaboration with the ISCM Polish Section called Sound and Silence, co-produced by Polish National Television and Adamov Films (France). In the 30-minute program devoted to Chen Yi, excerpts from three of her chamber music compositions were performed and she was interviewed by ISCM’s then President, Zygmunt Krauze.

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.”