Derek Wang, piano

With virtuosity and “enviable idiomatic rigor” (The Wall Street Journal) at the service of “pure poetry” (Seen and Heard International), pianist Derek Wang is drawing increasing acclaim in the roles of soloist, collaborator, curator, and communicator. 

A proponent of the music of Franz Liszt, Derek was awarded second prize at the 12th International Liszt Competition (Liszt Utrecht) in the Netherlands in 2022, which followed on the heels of first prize at the inaugural New York Liszt Competition in 2021. He held a three-summer-long fellowship position as pianist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble at the Aspen Music Festival, performing a total of over fifty works of the 20th and 21st centuries. In 2025, Derek began a role as Creative Enterprise Fellow at Juilliard, curating a range of programs including sesquicentennial celebrations of composer Charles Ives and poet Rainer Maria Rilke, an interdisciplinary program interweaving ecological texts with George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), and an all-Philip Glass marathon concert on the composer’s 88th birthday. 

Derek holds degrees from Juilliard and from the Yale School of Music. His principal teachers have included Stephen Hough, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Matti Raekallio, and Boris Slutsky. He continues his studies at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover, Germany in the studio of Arie Vardi. derek-wang.com