Praised for her “bountiful gifts and passionate immersion into the music she touches” (The Plain Dealer), Chinese pianist Fei-Fei Dong 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” and “winning stage presence” (Dallas Morning News).
Her burgeoning career includes a number of prominent concerto engagements in the 2016-17 season, including performances with the Anchorage Symphony, Spokane Symphony, DuPage Symphony (IL) and a special concert with the Pacific Symphony, featuring Fei-Fei playing both Beethoven Concerto No. 1 and No. 4 with conductor Carl St, Clair at Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo, CA. Featured recitals this season include the SUNY Purchase Performing Arts Center and the Howland Chamber Music Circle Piano Festival (both NY), Macon Concert Association (GA), and Atlantic Music Center (FL). This follows a busy summer 2016 schedule internationally, including recitals at Spain’s Auditorio Nacional de Madrid, and in Shenzhen, China and Nantucket, MA, as well as a concerto with Germany’s Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock and chamber music at the Music at Menlo Festival.
Fei-Fei’s 2015 summer festival highlights include Bravo! Vail Valley, the Highlands Chamber Music and Lake George Music Festivals, and a recital for Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Concert Series. She was showcased prominently 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.
Career concerto highlights in the US include the Fort Worth Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Corpus Christi Symphony, Austin Symphony, Youngstown Symphony, Fort Collins Symphony, Denver Philharmonic, and the Juilliard Orchestra, and in China with the Shanxi and Shenzhen Symphony Orchestras. She has worked with such prominent conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Michael Stern, Jeffrey Kahane, Randall Craig Fleisher, and John Giordano.
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) and The Cliburn’s spring 2015 Chopin Festival, and in Europe at 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. 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.
