Derek Wang

Pianist Derek Wang is drawing increasing acclaim in the roles of soloist, collaborator, curator, and communicator.

Wang first came to international attention with his performances of Liszt, receiving awards at the 12th Liszt Utrecht Competition in the Netherlands in 2022 and at the inaugural New York Liszt Competition in 2021. He is a returning guest artist at the Moab Music Festival in Utah, at the Rome Chamber Music Festival in Italy, and at the Vail Dance Festival in Colorado.

A proponent of the music of our time, Wang held a three-summer-long fellowship position as the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble's pianist at the Aspen Music Festival under conductors Donald Crockett and Timothy Weiss, performing a more than fifty works from the 20th and 21st centuries including premieres of works by the festival’s composition fellows.

In 2025, he became a creative enterprise fellow at Juilliard, curating a range of programs including sesquicentennial celebrations of composer Charles Ives and poet Rainer Maria Rilke, an interdisciplinary pairing of ecological texts with George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), and an all-Philip Glass marathon concert on the composer’s 88th birthday.

Wang is widely praised for his ability to speak about music to audiences of all kinds and in formats ranging from traditional pre-concert talks to podcasts and other digital media. In 2023, he served as guest host for WQXR New York’s Young Artists Showcase. Previously, Wang appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk video series for a special episode of From the Top, emceeing, interviewing, and performing with young instrumental soloists. In 2020, Wang partnered with violinist Sophia Stoyanovich to produce "American Stories," a series of podcast episodes that examine and celebrate American identity through music, featuring guests including a nurse on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, an adventuresome family of five living in an RV, a poet and founder of a Black artists’ community center, and a long-haul truck driver.

Wang holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard, where he was the recipient of a Kovner Fellowship and the Joseph W. Polisi Prize for exemplifying the values of the artist as citizen. In 2024, he received an artist diploma from the Yale School of Music. His principal teachers have included Stephen Hough, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Matti Raekallio, and Boris Slutsky. He continues his studies at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover, Germany in the studio of Arie Vardi.