Kuang-Hao Huang

American pianist Kuang-Hao Huang has been a familiar figure on Chicago's classical scene, both as a solo player and, especially, as a collaborator. He is noted for his commitment to new music. A native of Whitewater, Wisconsin, Huang was born on December 23, 1970. He attended high school in Whitewater and then went on for degrees at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Indiana, and Northwestern University. Among his teachers were Howard Karp, Sylvia Wang, Rita Sloan, Leonard Hokanson, and Joseph Kalichstein. He also performed with the New World Symphony academy led by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. After settling in Chicago, Huang became active as an educator, serving on the faculty of various institutions. He is on the faculty at Roosevelt University and Concordia University-Chicago, and has given educational outreach presentations in Chicago's public schools. He also coordinated the piano program at the National High School Music Institute at Northwestern. Huang has performed a wide variety of new music, including world premieres of works by Chen Yi and Louis Andriessen at New York's Weill Hall, under the auspices of the Carnegie Hall Millennium Piano Book Project. In chamber ensembles he has premiered works by John Harbison, Laura Schwendinger, Jacob Bancks, Kyong Mee Choi, Daniel Kellogg, and others. Huang has performed with the Chicago Chamber Musicians and with the Vermeer String Quartet and other string quartets in Chicago and beyond. His activities extend to work with more experimental ensembles as well, including MusicNOW and the CUBE Ensemble. He has been heard as an accompanist on recordings on the Centaur, Naxos, and Cedille labels, participating in the Notorious RBG in Song album of settings of texts by U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2018. He also accompanied baritone Thomas Hampson that year on his album Songs from Chicago, released on Cedille. ~ James Manheim