Seventeen-year-old pianist Derek Wang has a thirst for beautiful music that he is driven to share, in the belief that great art invites all of today's citizens in a search for sincerity and unity.
Derek studies piano with Yoheved Kaplinsky and composition with Manuel Sosa at the Pre-College Division of The Juilliard School, where he was named the winner of the 2015 Prokofiev piano concerto competition. He spends part of each summer as a student at the Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado. Derek received the Rosalyn Tureck Prize at the Third International Rosalyn Tureck Bach Competition in 2013. He appeared on a national broadcast of NPR’s From the Top show the following year in Tacoma, WA. Most recently, he was awarded as a 2016 National YoungArts Week Finalist.
In 2012, Derek collaborated with Academy Award-winning producer Hugh Welchman to perform the etudes of Chopin as a live complement to screenings of the animated film Magic Piano, at its premiere for the New York International Children’s Film Festival at Lincoln Center and in Guangzhou, China.
In collaboration with From the Top and the Lang Lang International Music Foundation, Derek feels a collective responsibility on his generation of artists to enrich American society through art music. He thus supports ongoing efforts in music outreach and education, having led workshops for public school students across the country, as well as at his own high school in Weston, Mass., where Derek ensured that the homecoming festivities included a piano recital featuring Brahms. Derek also enjoys poetry and is an avid baseball fan.
