Hao Huang (born February 12, 1957) is a concert pianist and professor of music at Scripps College as well as being a polymath published scholar in general music, popular music, ethnomusicology, anthropology, American Studies and Humanities. He frequently performs and lectures in the U.S.A., China, Italy, Hungary, Austria and other countries.
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Hao Huang was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. In 1967, he began piano studies with distinguished concert pianist, pedagogue and composer Seymour Bernstein in New York City, continuing until acceptance to Harvard College, Harvard University at age 17. Huang was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Scholarship at Harvard College during which time he studied with Leon Fleisher. Upon graduation with an AB in music, Huang won by audition the Frank Huntington Beebe grant for European Study. After returning to the States, he studied with Beveridge Webster at the Juilliard School, graduating with an M.M. in piano. Huang finished his academic studies as a Graduate Council Fellow at the Stony Brook University, with a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano under Charles Rosen and Gilbert Kalish.
Professor of Music and artist-in-residence at Scripps College[1] and four-time United States Information Agency Artistic Ambassador, Hao Huang has performed in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. A guest performer at the George Enescu Festival and the Barcelona Cultural Olympiad, he was also concerto soloist with the Timisoara "Banatul" Philharmonic, Sinfonietta Hungarica, Brevard Music Center Orchestra, Music in the Mountains Festival Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and others. Founder and first artistic director of the Animas Music Festival,[2] Durango, Colorado, Huang remains an active chamber musician with the Mei Duo and the Gold Coast Trio.[3] Prior to joining the music faculty at Scripps College, Huang taught on the faculties of the Petrie School of Music at Converse College and the Hochschule für Musik "Franz Liszt", Weimar, Germany. He has been guest artist faculty at University of California, Davis, San Francisco State University, the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, the Regional Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at Veszprém Castle, Hungary and Xiamen University, People's Republic of China, and others. Huang has appeared in broadcasts on television and radio in concert and lecture format in the USA and abroad. He was featured in an Artist/Educator interview on The Piano Education Page.[4]
Huang's article, "The Parable of the Grasshoppers",[5] was honored as American Music Teacher's 1995 Article of the Year by the Music Teachers National Association. Additional articles on piano pedagogy, Native American music, Chinese rock 'n' roll, Hmong shamanic practices and jazz music and poetry have been published in the College Music Symposium, Clavier Magazine, Music Teacher (London), Piano Journal (London, European Piano Teachers Association), American Indian Culture and Research Journal (UCLA), Popular Music (Cambridge University Press), Popular Music and Society (NIU, Routledge Press), Art and Academe (School of the Visual Arts, NYC), Asian Folklore Studies (Nanzan University, Japan), Humanities International (Xiamen University, PRC) and the Annual Review of Jazz Studies (Rutgers University). Huang was a contributing member of the international editorial board of the Encyclopedia of Music in the Twentieth Century, published by M.E. Sharpe (London) and has written a book chapter, "The Oekku-Shadeh of Ohkay Owingeh" in Voices from Four Directions (University of Nebraska Press). In recognition of his interdisciplinary scholarly work in jazz and literature, he was interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition about "The 'Lost' Opera of James P. Johnson and Langston Hughes".[6]
Winner of the USIA David Bruce Smith National Competition, the Overman Foundation Competition first prize, the Van Cliburn Piano Award at Interlochen Center for the Arts and other awards, Huang also performed as the China Institute in America's New York Solo Debut Artist at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York and Colorado Councils of the Arts and the California Meet the Composer Series. Founder and original executive director of the Animas Music Festival in Durango, Colorado, Huang is active as a chamber musician with the Mei Duo and the Gold Coast Trio.[7] In 2008, Huang was selected to be a Fulbright Scholar in Music and American Studies at Eötvös Lorand University[8] in Budapest, Hungary. Over the summers of 2007, 2008 and 2010, he led Scripps College music faculty delegations by invitation to the Arts College at Xiamen University, PRC. Huang has received multiple Mary W. Johnson Faculty Achievement Awards for Outstanding Research, Creative Work and Performance and also several M.W. Johnson Faculty Awards for Outstanding Teaching at Scripps College. He has been awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching Development Fellowship "Bridging Cultures",[9] an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Local Initiatives Grant for the Claremont Colleges Faculty College of Music, a Mellon Foundation Inter-Institutional Travel Grant to Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, a Mellon Foundation "Odyssey" grant, a James Irvine Foundation Diversity in the Curriculum Development Grant and a Irvine Foundation Faculty Research Grant for ethnomusicological fieldwork on Hmong traditional music in northern Thailand.