Yuja Wang

Wang was the partner of conductor Klaus Mäkelä. She lives in New York City.

Wang was born into a musical family in Beijing. Her mother, Zhai Jieming, is a dancer, and her father, Wang Jianguo, is a percussionist. She began studying piano at the age of six and started at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music at seven.

At 15, Wang entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied with Gary Graffman for five years and graduated in 2008. She also received advanced training in Canada and was the youngest student at the Morningside Music Bridge International Music Festival in Calgary at age 11.

Wang's early competition successes included third prize at the 1998 Ettlingen International Competition for Young Pianists and third prize plus a special jury prize at the 2001 Sendai International Music Competition. She won the concerto competition at the Aspen Music Festival in 2002 and made her European debut with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in 2003, performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 under David Zinman.

Her international breakthrough came in 2007, when she replaced Martha Argerich in four Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts and performed Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Charles Dutoit conducting. She later made debuts with the New York Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic, and performed with ensembles including the Vienna Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony.

In 2019, Wang gave the world premiere of John Adams's Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel. In 2022, she premiered Magnus Lindberg's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the San Francisco Symphony. At Carnegie Hall in January 2023, she performed all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in a single concert with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Wang signed an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 2009. Her releases include Sonatas & Etudes, Transformation, Fantasia, The Berlin Recital, The American Project, The Vienna Recital and recordings of concertos by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, John Adams and Shostakovich. Her performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" at the Verbier Festival became widely viewed online, with more than three and a half million YouTube views.

Her awards include the 2006 Gilmore Young Artist Award, Gramophone's 2009 Young Artist of the Year award, the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the 2011 Echo Klassik Young Artist of the Year award and Musical America's 2017 Artist of the Year award. She won the 2019 Gramophone Instrumental Award for The Berlin Recital, the 2021 Opus Klassik Award for her recording of Adams's Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?, and a Grammy Award for The American Project.

As a chamber musician, Wang has developed long-lasting partnerships with leading artists and toured internationally with pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. She has also collaborated with musicians including Leonidas Kavakos, Gautier Capuçon and Andreas Ottensamer.

Wang's playing has been noted for its technical precision, emotional directness, wide range of color and physical stamina. Critics have also drawn attention to her spontaneous programming and lively performances, as well as her glamorous stage presence and eye-catching outfits.

In 2023, she collaborated with painter David Hockney on Lightroom Live: Yuja x Hockney in London. The performance surrounded the audience with large-scale projections of Hockney's artwork and live images of Wang. She later recorded Playing with Fire: An Immersive Odyssey with Yuja Wang, a mixed-reality concert created with VIVE Arts, Atlas V and Lightroom.