About Me

I’m a pianist, composer, and DMA candidate in Performance Practice (Keyboard Studies) from Cornell University. At the heart of my work is an interest in material modes of transhistorical musical transmission, including notation and archival media. In particular, I train this focus on piano music since 1900, musical modernism within and outside of the West, domestic music-making following the rise of the middle class, and socially hermetic music.

As a performer, I’m drawn especially to what has been called “highly notated” music (for instance, the music of Milton Babbitt), as well as underrepresented repertoires demanding unconventional approaches to textual interpretation. As a composer by training, I maintain an interest in new music as well, often playing music by living composers, and taking special joy in collaborating with friends.

My work with notation also includes such practices as transcription and critical edition that may facilitate performances and analysis anew. Some of my editorial work has appeared in publication, and indeed brought forth new performances.

The primary focus of current such work is a dissertation about the music and life of Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru. Upcoming and recent projects include a new realization of Maryanne Amacher’s “Petra” with Jack Yarbrough, an album of piano music by Eve Beglarian, and a new piano work by Alison Yun-fei Jiang, the premiere of an evening-length work by Tui St. George Tucker, and an undergraduate course about the piano as (especially post-colonial) nation-building venue.

I haven’t been writing much music myself lately. The little that I do write is mostly for myself to play, though sometimes it is graciously picked up by others. I have tended not to write many notes anyway, tending toward a concentration of expression. Through novel (“experimental”) means I write from a place of warmth, wit, and charm.

Outside of music, I am currently learning American Sign Language, and am an occasional forager and home winemaker. I’m also a proud, doting parent of cats: Langshaw, and Daisy, and Nala.

A “professional” bio is available here.

My surname, “Feng” (冯 féng), correctly pronounced, rhymes with “sung”, not “sang”.