Natalie Zhu

Pianist Natalie Zhu has toured with violinist Hilary Hahn as an accompanist and also has notable careers as a soloist and chamber musician. In demand for festival appearances, Zhu is the artistic director of Rhode Island's Kingston Chamber Music Festival. Zhu was born in Beijing, China, around 1975 (a 2006 newspaper interview gave her age as 31) and took up the piano there at age six, studying with Xiao-Cheng Liu. At nine, she made her debut in Beijing. When Zhu was 11, she and her family emigrated to Los Angeles, where she took lessons with Li Ming-Qiang and Robert Turner. She enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at 15, studying with Gary Graffman for seven years and winning the school's competitive Rachmaninoff Award. Zhu went on to Yale University, where she studied with Claude Frank and received a Master of Music degree and an artist diploma. She scored a major breakthrough in 1997 when she was chosen as accompanist by Hilary Hahn, a fellow Curtis student. Their touring partnership lasted for some years and spawned an album of Mozart violin-and-piano sonatas, released by the Deutsche Grammophon label in 2005. She followed that up with the recital album Images, which appeared in 2007 on the Meyer Media label. Several grants, including the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Musical Fund Society Career Advancement Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, and the Astral Artists Award, helped Zhu's career along. Zhu has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras in the U.S., China, and elsewhere, including the Indianapolis Symphony, the Bergen Philharmonic, and the China Philharmonic. She has appeared frequently with the Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin as an orchestral pianist. Zhu has given solo recitals at Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, and Merkin Hall in New York, the Herkulessaal in Munich, Germany, and the Beijing Concert Hall, among other top venues. Her festival credits include her European debut at the Festival de Sully et d'Orleans in France in 1994. Zhu has performed with the Vermeer, Miami, and Daedalus Quartets and collaborated with members of other leading chamber groups, including the Beaux Arts Trio. In 2009, Zhu became artistic director of the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, and she continued to hold that position as of the mid-2020s. She has also served on the faculty of the Curtis Institute as staff pianist. Zhu appeared as accompanist on several Suzuki Violin School albums issued by the Alfred label, and in 2023, she backed cellist Clancy Newman on the Albany album From Method to Madness: The American Sound.
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