Cecilia Lo-Chien Kao

Taiwanese pianist Cecilia Lo-Chien Kao is a dynamic performer that is in demand as a chamber musician. She has collaborated with several distinguished artists including Lynn Harrell, Stefan Jackiw, Robert McDuffie, James Markey, Bion Tsang, David Coucheron, and Jennifer Stumm, members of the Tokyo, Emerson, Juilliard String Quartets, among many others.

Kao is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Collaborative Piano at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. She is also the Co-founder and Artistic Director of the Scheherazade Music Festival in Kansas City and the Coordinator of Collaborative Piano at the prestigious Meadowmount School of Music in Westport, New York. She has been a collaborative pianist at Columbus State University and Mercer University in Georgia, where she worked with students of the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings.

She has appeared at Carnegie Weill Hall and can be heard with cellist Bion Tsang on his CD The Blue Rock Sessions. She was also a founding member of the Boulder Altitude Directive, a modern music ensemble dedicated to commissioning and performing new music, during their inaugural season. Kao has received fellowships for both the Aspen School of Music and the Music Academy of the West. She also was a chamber music artist at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival in Florida.

Kao holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Collaborative Piano from the University of Colorado Boulder and a Master of Music degree in Collaborative Piano from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied with the pioneer pedagogue, Anne Epperson. Prior to her move to the U.S., she was one of the first pianists to receive the Master of Arts degree in Collaborative Piano from National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, where she also received her bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance.

Cecilia Lo-Chien Kao is a Yamaha Performing Artist.