Hsing-ay Hsu

Since her stage debut at age 4, Steinway Artist HSING-AY HSU (“Sing-I Shoo”) has been performing at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, in Europe and Asia, and at festivals including the International Odyssiad® Festival and the Gulangyu Int'l Piano Festival in China. Passionate about processing life through the human experience of music, Ms. Hsu uses her rich experiences as a performer, studio owner, producer, consultant, clinician, and artist-teacher to help others make connections between analysis, emotions, and breath (mind/body/heart). She is especially interested in fostering multi-disciplinary appreciation and teaching communications skills for musicians.

Ms. Hsu’s thoughtful musical interpretations have won her international recognition, including the William Petschek Debut Award at Juilliard (highest honor given to a pianist), William Kapell Int'l Competition, Ima Hogg Nat'l First-Prize, Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship, Gilmore Young Artist Award, and the US Presidential Scholar of the Arts Award from President Clinton. Her chamber music activities have included concerts from the intimate Bargemusic in New York to the Cultural Centre of Hong Kong. An advocate of new music, she has recorded solo works of Ezra Laderman and premiered works by Ned Rorem. A versatile concerto soloist performing Bach to Barber, she is described by the Washington Post as full of “power, authority, and self-assurance.” Concerto collaborations include the Houston Symphony Orchestra as first-prize winner of the Ima Hogg National Competition, the Baltimore Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, Pacific Symphony (Calif), Colorado Springs, Florida West Coast, Fort Collins, New Jersey, Waterbury (Conn.), China National, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Xiamen Symphony Orchestras. 

Television and radio feature broadcasts include Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion Live from Tanglewood (for a 10,000+ live audience members and 3.9 million broadcast audience), NPR’s Performance Today with Martin Goldsmith, TCI cablevision’s Grand Piano Recital (Calif.), WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase, CPR’s Colorado Spotlight, China Central National TV, Hong Kong Phoenix TV, and Danish National Radio. She has recorded CD/DVD’s for Pacific Records, Albany Records, and Nutmeg Press labels.

Ms. Hsu is a multi-faceted cultural collaborator and producer. During the pandemic, she began to release weekly offerings of interviews, performances, and musical concepts through her Youtube Channel “hsingayhsupianist” and via her e-newsletter “Hsing-ay’s Notes”. Previously the Artistic Director for Pendulum New Music at the University of Colorado-Boulder for fourteen seasons, she brought in international artists to the region from Finland, Mexico, the U.K., and hosted masterclasses by celebrities including Kronos and Béla Fleck. She also co-presented festivals of George Crumb and John Cage, created site-specific community outreach programming, and coached close to five hundred student composition premieres.

As owner of the Nutmeg Studio, Ms. Hsu creates a retreat for creative lifelong learners like herself through lessons, coachings, workshops, and interactive listening webinars. She teaches masterclasses at such venues as Conservatoire Ravel in Paris and Xiamen University, and adjudicates for national and international competitions. A beloved teacher, many of her students have won numerous solo and concerto prizes by gaining confidence through improving their daily practice. Besides chairing the Colorado State Music Teachers Association College Forum, she served on the national editorial board of American Music Teacher magazine. She has also taught as visiting piano faculty for several universities and organizations including the University of Colorado at Boulder and Friends of Chamber Music Denver, has lectured at conferences including the MTNA National Convention, and recently joined the faculty of the global online music studio Aeyons. Her Conscious ListeningTMmonthly seminars and dynamic 4-Step Method bring classical music to a wider audience through festivals, private homes, music societies, and concert series talks. She also teaches every summer at the the Rocky Ridge Adult Piano Seminars, the International Keyboard Odyssiad Festival in Colorado, and at Chautauqua’s Special Courses in upstate New York.

Born in Beijing to a musical family, Ms. Hsu trained with her uncle Fei-Ping Hsu, at the Juilliard School, Yale University, as well as Aspen, Ravinia Steans Institute, the Aldeburgh Festival in the U.K., and Tanglewood. Ms. Hsu is married to composer Daniel Kellogg who is the new president of Young Concert Artists, Inc., and they have one daughter. She is based in New York City. Besides music, she loves to travel with her family and take dance classes. Blogs/Newsletters/Videos at hsingayhsu.com.