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Natalie Zhu

About this Artist

The recipient of the 2003 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, pianist NATALIE ZHU has performed throughout North America, Europe, and China as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. She has performed in the United States with the Pacific Symphony, the Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Astral Chamber Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic, and the Colorado Philharmonic National Repertory Orchestra.

An active chamber musician, Zhu has appeared in New York's Steinway Hall and is featured this season with violinist Christina Castelli and cellist Clancy Newman at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. Zhu collaborates with renowned violinist Hilary Hahn in tours of the U.S., Europe, and Japan, including a hugely successful Carnegie Hall recital debut. The duo plans to record Mozart sonatas for the Deutsche Grammophon label.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the grand prize in both the 1988 and 1989 Young Keyboard Artists Association Competitions; the 1988 and 1991 Johanna Hodges Piano Concerto Competitions; and the first China International Piano Competition.

Zhu began her piano studies with Xiao-Cheng Liu at the age of six in her native China and made her first public appearance at age nine in Beijing. At eleven she emigrated with her family to Los Angeles; by fifteen she was enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she received the prestigious Rachmaninoff Award and studied with Gary Graffman. In 2001 she joined the Curtis faculty as staff pianist. Zhu received a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Claude Frank.