Chinese-American pianist George Xiaoyuan Fu is a piano fellow at the Royal Academy of Music. He has performed as a soloist with many leading American orchestras and collaborated with such conductors as Michael Tilson Thomas, Stefan Asbury, Kensho Watanabe, Vinay Parameswaran and Jonathan Berman.
He has appeared at international venues including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall and the Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. His live performances and interviews have been featured on television and radio broadcasts around the world, such as In Tune on BBC Radio 3, Performance Today on National Public Radio and On Stage At Curtis in Philadelphia.
This season sees George make solo debut performances in Washington D.C. (Phillips Collection), and Chicago (Chicago Cultural Center), as well as appearing for the first time in Wales (St David’s Hall) and France (Festival Saint-Mère). In March, George will give world premières of new solo piano works by Philip Cashian, Robert Saxton and Mark-Anthony Turnage at the Royal Academy of Music. 2020 also marks the second year of the TaoArts Chamber Music Festival, an annual series in the Washington D.C. area of which George is the Founder and co-Artistic Director.
An avid performer of contemporary music, George has collaborated with Krzysztof Penderecki, Harrison Birtwistle, George Lewis, Unsuk Chin, Matthew Aucoin and Freya Waley-Cohen. In addition, he is an active composer himself, having completed several works for solo piano and performed his own cadenzas to Mozart piano concerti.
After a widely acclaimed performance as piano soloist in Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie at the Tanglewood Music Festival, George was selected as a New Fromm Player and performed as a piano soloist in Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques with Vinay Parameswaran, as well as collaborating with members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).
After receiving a degree in economics from Harvard University, George studied at the Curtis Institute of Music under Jonathan Biss and Meng-Chieh Liu, and then at the Royal Academy of Music under Christopher Elton and Joanna MacGregor. He has also worked intensively with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, specifically on the music of Messiaen and Debussy.
