Ran Jia

At twenty, pianist Ran Jia is already regarded as a striking musician with unusual natural abilities. Tan Dun hailed her a “piano poet with dramatic skill in music making.”

Born in Chengdu, Sichuan, China, Ms. Jia began studying piano at the age of three. She made her solo debut in 1995, and has since performed publicly in Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu, Fuzhou, and Xiamen in China. Her numerous awards include The Special Prize for her performance of a Mozart Sonata in the Second Piano International-E-Competition in 2004; the Silver Medal in The National Cultural Ministry Dandelion Youth Arts Competition in Nanjing, China in 2001; First Prize and the Osaka Mayor Prize in the Shanghai-Osaka Chinese and Japanese Friendship Youth Piano Competition in 2000; First Prize in The Sichuan Youth Piano Competition in 1998; and Second Prize in The National Xinghai Cup Piano Competition in 1998. Piano master Fou T’song praised her talent in the Evening News Standard in Shanghai as “an amazing natural feeling for music.”

In May 2004, Ms. Jia played a recital at the Heluting Concert Hall at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Her recital was received with great enthusiasm by the audience and the media. Oriental TV broadcasted two documentaries featuring Ms. Jia’s life as a young artist including her live performance at the Conservatory. In November 2005, Ms. Jia made her debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall with her teacher, Gary Graffman, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at a “Junior/Senior Concert” organized by the Musicians Emergency Fund, Inc. Ms. Jia performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467 under Maestro Li Jian.

Recent highlights include a return, sold-out concert at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and a performance of two Mozart concerti with the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra at the Shanghai Concert Hall. She has been featured in a live concert on Chicago’s classical music station WFMT as well as a worldwide broadcast on WQXR in New York of a concert in honor of Thelonius Monk’s 90th birthday for which she was the only classical pianist invited to perform. Ms. Jia made an acclaimed European recital debut at the Klavierfestival Ruhr in the summer of 2008 playing two Schubert sonatas. The press commented “She refines each moment, each development, each transition of a melody to the next…With marvelous impressive elegance in touch she feels her way into Schubert’s language – sometimes with dolorous sweetness, sometimes with thunderous rage, then again with a sparkling style, to then go back to a Beethovian energy. There are no fractures, no stutters, no technical hurdles – with this pianist the structures and sounds flow naturally on its own…Tremendous.” Ms. Jia also recently made her Vancouver Symphony Orchestra subscription debut under Maestro Bramwell Tovey, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.12 in A major, K. 414. For a recent concert at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, Ms. Jia performed Tan Dun’s “Eight Memories in Watercolor” and Schubert’s Sonata in c minor, D 958. Future engagements include performances at the opening of the Miami International Piano Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, and with the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

Ran Jia is currently studying with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her father, Professor Daqun Jia, is one of the leading composers in China and Dean of the Graduate Study Programs at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Ran Jia is managed worldwide by Tanja Dorn at IMG Artists.