Joyce Yang made her North Carolina Symphony debut in 2013, performing Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain at concerts in Raleigh, New Bern, and Moore County.

Grammy-nominated pianist Joyce Yang first came to international attention in 2005 when she won the silver medal at the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The youngest contestant at 19 years old, she took home two additional awards. In 2006 Yang made her New York Philharmonic debut. Subsequent appearances have included opening night of the 2008 Leonard Bernstein Festival, where The New York Times pronounced her performance in Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety a “knockout.” Notable orchestral engagements have included the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and San Francisco Symphony. She received the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2010 and earned her first Grammy nomination in 2018 with violinist Augustin Hadelich.

Yang made a return visit to the Aspen Music Festival in the summer of 2025 and a debut at San Diego’s Mainly Mozart Festival. In the 2025/26 season, concerto appearances include New Jersey Symphony and Oregon Symphony and the St. Louis, Vancouver, Milwaukee symphony orchestras, among many others. As a chamber musician, she will reunite with the Takàcs Quartet performing Schumann’s Piano Quintet.

In November of 2025, Yang will perform a new work by Jonathan Leshnoff: Rhapsody on America, a piece written expressly for her. She has premiered piano concertos by Michael Torke, Jonathan Leshnoff, and Reinaldo Moya. Her 10 recordings include solo discs and a live recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Denmark’s Odense Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Yang received her first piano lesson from her aunt at the age of four. By the age of ten, she had entered the School of Music at the Korea National University of Arts. In 1997, she began studies at The Juilliard School. During her first year, Yang won the pre-college division Concerto Competition. After winning The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Greenfield Student Competition, she performed Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with that orchestra at just 12 years old. She graduated from Juilliard as the recipient of the school’s 2010 Arthur Rubinstein Prize, and in 2011 she won its 30th Annual William A. Petschek Piano Recital Award. She is a Steinway artist.