Wen-Ting Ong, a Taiwanese pianist from Michigan, has an avid interest in the collaboration of different arts and recently played with the Lawrence Community Orchestra as live orchestral accompaniment to the silent film classic- “The Mark of Zorro”. She is also a ballet accompanist with the KU Dance Department and The School of Dance at the Lawrence Arts Center. The afternoon’s program will include Prokofiev Concerto No. 3 in CM, Op. 26 and Ravel’s La Valse.
Watch Wen-Ting Ong perform York Bowen Toccata:
Wen-Ting Ong
Wen-Ting Ong started the piano at seven years old with other interests in art, winning regional and state awards for watercolor painting. However, her involvement in music grew more exponentially than her time in the art studio and she began competing in solo piano and concerto competitions. She won first place in the Chopin Fine Arts Club Competition, IMTA, and Honorable Mention in the MTNA Junior Division. Wen-Ting later attended Andrews University, majoring in Piano Performance and Pre-med Studies and finished her Master’s Degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In her time there, she won second place in the Darius Milhaud Solo Performance and Chamber Competition. She entered the University of Kansas in 2014 to pursue doctoral studies in Piano Performance with Jack Winerock. During her time in Kansas, she won the 2014 Fort Hays Concerto Competition, received the Patronus Award from the 2015 SAI Scholarship. Wen-Ting received Honorable Mention in the Bradshaw and Buono International Competition for Piano Duo and was a scholarship recipient for the 2015 NKCP (National Conference for Keyboard Pedagogy) in Chicago. She was given a grant from the Koch Cultural Fund to support her contemporary musical ventures at the 2015 Cortona Sessions in Italy which she became a resident fellow in 2016.
She was also the Co-Music Director/Pianist at Lawrence Opera Theatre during their 2015 season and coached at the 2016 Prairie Winds Festival at the Lied Center. Wen-Ting also enjoys integrating music with dance and is currently a ballet accompanist at the Lawrence Arts Center as well as at the KU School of Dance and Theatre Department.
