Leah Kang

Pianist Leah Kang (D.M.A.) is a musician of diverse interests who received degrees in biology and public health at the University of California, Los Angeles prior to pursuing professional studies in music. She has performed in the United States, Germany, Austria, France, Canada, Czech Republic, and has been featured as a soloist with the Antelope Valley Symphony Orchestra, Tehachapi Symphony Orchestra, and the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra in concertos by Beethoven and Chopin. She has been awarded prizes in the International Siegfried Weishaupt Piano Competition and the American Prize Competition for Piano Performance (professional division). Her performances have been broadcast on SWR2 of Germany and WFMT in Chicago. Recent and upcoming solo performances include appearances in the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts series in Chicago, Les Dimanches Musicaux in Paris, Epiphany Tuesday Concert Series in Washington D.C., Sunset Music and Arts Concert Series in San Francisco and the Stoughton Opera House. Equally passionate about teaching, Leah has served on the music faculties of Antelope Valley College and Citrus College, and as Associate Instructor of Music Theory at Indiana University Bloomington. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she taught applied piano, advanced keyboard skills, and class piano for the School of Music and community music classes for the Division of Continuing Studies. She is also frequently invited as an adjudicator for competitions and auditions throughout California and Wisconsin. As a two-time recipient of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) research fellowship, Leah spent her dissertation years as a visiting scholar at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. Her research explores arrangements of Beethoven’s works as created by his close contemporaries. She performed a lecture recital premiering rare chamber music arrangements of Beethoven's overtures in the US and has presented aspects of her research at international conferences such as “Beethoven-Perspektiven” (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, Germany), "Beethoven 2020: Analytical and Performative Perspectives" (Dutch-Flemish Society for Music Theory, Amsterdam, Netherlands), and the World Piano Conference (Novi Sad, Serbia). Current interests involving pioneering French women composers from the early twentieth century have been supported in part by the Illinois Arts Council Agency and the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. Leah earned her Master of Music and Performer Diploma in Piano Performance from Indiana University Bloomington and her Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her primary mentors include pianists Arnaldo Cohen and Christopher Taylor. Additional studies and masterclasses have been with artists such as Richard Goode, Leif Ove Andsnes, Bernd Goetzke, Daniel Pollack, and Jerome Lowenthal. For more information, please visit: https://www.leahkang.com / [email protected] / https://www.youtube.com/@leahkang