Leah Kang - Piano

Pianist Leah Kang is a musician of diverse interests who received degrees in biology and public health at University of California, Los Angeles prior to pursuing  professional studies in music. She has performed in the United States, Germany, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, and has soloed 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 American Prize Competition for Piano Performance (professional division), International Siegfried Weishaupt Piano Competition, and the American Protégé International Piano Competition, among others. Her performance as a winner of the International Siegfried Weishaupt Piano Competition was broadcast on SWR2 of Germany.

Leah has served as music faculty at Antelope Valley College and Citrus College, as Associate Instructor of Music Theory at Indiana University Bloomington, and as a piano instructor for the School of Music and Division of Continuing Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 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 premiered rare chamber music arrangements of Beethoven’s overtures in the US, and in 2020, presented aspects of her research at international conferences across Europe commemorating Beethoven’s 250th anniversary. Leah earned her Master of Music and Performer Diploma in Piano Performance from Indiana University 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 Bernd Goetzke, Leif Ove Andsnes, Richard
Goode, Daniel Pollack, and Jerome Lowenthal.