Dr. Grace Fong is a prize-winning American pianist who has gained critical acclaim in the United States, Canada, Europe, United Arab Emirates and Asia. She has been featured at major venues including Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall; the Kennedy Center; the Hollywood Bowl; Great Hall in Leeds, UK; the Liszt Academy in Budapest; and the National Center for Performing Arts, Beijing. She has performed as soloist with major orchestras including the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra under Valery Gergiev and the Halle Orchestra in the United Kingdom under Mark Elder. Fong is the winner of one of America's most prestigious piano awards, the Christel DeHaan Classical Fellowship of the American Pianists Association (the first female winner in 12 years). She also won the Grand Prize in piano from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts and thereafter was named a "Presidential Scholar in the Arts,’” for which she was awarded a performance at the Kennedy Center and presented with a medallion by the President of the United States at the White House. Born in Los Angeles, Fong was a Trustee (full) Scholarship recipient at the University of Southern California where she completed a double major and minor. At USC, Fong was awarded the prestigious Renaissance Scholar Prize and was named "The USC Thornton School of Music Keyboard Department's - Most Outstanding Student - B.M." She completed her Master's and Doctoral degrees at the Cleveland Institute of Music as a recipient of the Victor Babin Scholarship and was awarded the Sadie Zellen and William Kurzban piano prizes. Her teachers and mentors include Sergei Babayan, John Perry, Louise Lepley, Paulina Drake and Norberto Cappone. Fong is Full Professor and Director of Piano Studies at Chapman University’s Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music where she has been awarded the Valerie Scudder award for faculty excellence. She serves as an adjudicator for various competitions, and as a distinguished chamber artist, she has performed at the Ojai Festival, Sitka Chamber Music Festival, Guan Du Festival Taipei, the Missouri River Arts Festival, the Callian Festival, France; Musica in Collina Festival, Italy; Palais de Festivals des Congres de Cannes, France. A supporter of multi-disciplinary collaboration, Fong has embarked on a series of collaborations with dancers, filmmakers, chefs, fashion designers, and artists. Collaborations have included a music video filmed in London by Oscar-nominated and multi-award winning film Director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) in collaboration with designers Jimmy Choo and Boudicca; a performance at the Imperial Castle of Nuremberg in Germany for the International Salon Project, in collaboration with 2-star Michelin Chef, Andree Köthe; performances with the band Pink Martini, with which Fong has shared the stage with some of America's top orchestras and figures, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, NPR's Ari Shapiro, and the Emmy-Award winning Sesame Street; a collaboration with dance choreographer Alicia Okouchi-Guy, whose credits include Prince, the Oprah Winfrey Show, MTV, and the New York Knicks City Dancers, on a project entitled “Grace”; a performance entitled ‘Music for Peace’ with original films by Darrel Dorr, former Executive Vice President for International Productions at Disney Corporation and now Executive Vice President for live productions at Listen For Life. Fong most recently collaborates with computer scientists Erik Linstead and Rao Ali to work with Microsoft on a project entitled “Project Metamorphosis,” which taps machine learning to transform classical music into visual art, to ultimately assist those with visual and hearing impairment. Fong can be seen on BBC television and PBS; she also can be heard on NPR, the RED label and on the Heinz label for Starbucks release. For more information, visit www.pianistgracefong.com