Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Yi-Wen ChangApplied Music Instructor, Piano

Joined faculty in 2018

D.M.A., Eastman School of Music

M.M., The Juilliard School

B.M., Performer's Certificate, Eastman School of Music 

Contact Information

PERSONAL STATEMENT

Pianist Yi-Wen Chang, a well-established concert pianist, has been praised for her impeccable technique and creative communicative ideas. She has appeared as a soloist and collaborative pianist in the United States, Canada, Russia, and Taiwan. Chang holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Eastman School of Music, where she was awarded the prestigious Performer’s Certificate in recognition of outstanding concert artistry. She received a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School, and later returned to Eastman and earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance and Literature.

As an active concert pianist, Chang has worked with distinguished artists, such as Rebecca Penneys, Ian Bousfield, Ramon Ricker, Jeffrey Milarsky, as well as orchestras and ensembles, including Eastman Philharmonia and Eastman Wind Ensemble. She has performed in Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theatre, Taiwan National Concert Hall in Taipei, National Chiao-Tung University in Taiwan, Moscow Conservatory International Summer Festival, Johannesen International School of Arts in Canada, and Women in Music Festival in Rochester, New York. Her performances have been broadcast on WXXI and WBFO radio.

Chang has developed a deep interest in exploring stylistic progression of music after the eighteenth-century and is known for creating innovative concert programs. Since 2015, she has launched the “Then and Now” concert series combining traditional and contemporary music and presenting their evolution from the past to present time. In particular, she is fascinated by new compositions and re-creative repertoire, including piano transcriptions from songs, operas, symphonies, and other musical genres. Chang recently performed her piano transcription of a Taiwanese folk song, Longing for the Spring Breeze, and premiered her compositions, Imminence and A Stream of Thought, broadcast on WXXI. She has also collaborated with renowned contemporary composers, among them Benet Casablancas, David Liptak, Jennifer Higdon, Milton Babbitt, and Zhi-Yuan Guo. Jennifer Higdon praised Chang’s playing as “incredible rhythmic sense and imagination… a superb artistry”.

In addition to performing extensively as a soloist and collaborator, Chang is a dedicated pedagogue. A native of Taiwan, Chang has been an adjudicator in numerous piano competitions, including the MTNA New York State Competition, Nazareth College Piano Competition, and Taiwan Biennial National Piano Competition. Chang currently serves on the piano faculty of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and the Hochstein School of Music, and is a collaborative pianist at Nazareth College and SUNY Geneseo. In 2016, Chang published the Chinese translation of R.O.Morris’ Figured Harmony At The Keyboard (Oxford University Press), which has become widely used in colleges in Chinese-speaking countries.