Malaysian pianist Hao Zi Yoh was born in 1995 and began her music studies at the age of 3. By the age of 12, she already performed at Carnegie Hall as a gold medallist of the Bradshaw and Buono International Piano Competition. She studied in Malaysia under Chong Lim Ng and moved to Germany at the age of 14 to study with Elza Kolodin at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. In 2014, she came under the tutelage of Christopher Elton at the Royal Academy of Music, London. Her studies were generously supported by the Lynn Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, Countess of Munster and Craxton Memorial Trust.
Hao Zi has won top prizes in many international piano competitions, including the RNCM James Mottram International Piano Competition (Manchester, England 2012) and the Concurso internacional de piano Rotary Club Palma Ramon LLull, Mallorca (Spain 2013). She has performed in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Southbank Royal Festival Hall, Salle Cortot, Steinway Hall London, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Dewan Filharmonik Petronas (Malaysia) and Teatro Quirino (Italy). She has appeared as soloist performing in festivals around Europe, USA, China, Japan and Malaysia.Besides, she also performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Nova Amadeus and Baleares Symphony Orchestra.
Recent successes include being awarded the Third Prize in the main category of Roma International Piano Competition and the Phillip Crawshaw Memorial Prize at the Royal Overseas League Competition for an Outstanding Musician from Overseas. She was also selected for a Martin Musical Scholarship Trust Philharmonia Piano Fellowships on the Emerging Artists Programme 2017/18.
As a musician, Hao Zi is very interested in playing with sound colours and inviting the audience to see images in music: her MMus Project 2016 involved collaboration with percussionist Daniel Gonzalez to create a version of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit for Piano and Percussion. In her interpretation of “A Distant Voice of the Rainforest” by Malaysian pianist composer Chong Lim Ng (also her former teacher), she included improvised extended piano techniques as well as ethnic singing into the piece to draw the audience into the soundworld of a rainforest.
Apart from this, Hao Zi also participated in many creative outreach projects led by the Open Academy for children and elderly with Dementia and performed in Music for Moment Concerts at the Wigmore Hall. She collaborated with author-illustrator David Litchfield and improvised to his storytelling of award-winning book “The Bear and the Piano”.
A Young Steinway Artist, Hao Zi is currently based in the UK and further developing her performing career being part of the Keyboard Trust London, Talent Unlimited and Park Lane Group. She also tutors at King’s College London and gives masterclasses at Imperial College London. In Malaysia, Hao Zi has given talks, performances and masterclasses to the students of University of Malaya and Bentley Music, hoping to share her experiences and help inspire the younger generation.
Please note that due to circumstances beyond our and the artists' control, the artists originally advertised for this concert - the Seixas Chamber Orchestra and Fabio Fernandes (guitar) are unable to appear at this lunchtime concert. We will be rescheduling their performance in the next few months, and in the meantime we are very grateful to Hao Zi Yoh for stepping in at just 24 hours' notice to replace them.
Free recital (retiring collection)