Sophie Huang is 14 years old and a rising sophomore at Richard Montgomery High School. She has been playing piano for almost 10 years under Dr. JeongEun Park Kang, starting at the age of 4. She has been a prize winner at multiple solo piano competitions starting from first place in the YMIC Competition and second place in the MSMTA Spring Festival in 2015, then won second place in the Metropolitan Music Festival, first place in the the MSMTA Spring Festival, and first place in the Rockville Music Competition in 2016. At the age of 8, Sophie continued to play well, winning first place in the Rockville Music Competition for Piano and Strings in 2017, first place in the 2017 Metropolitan Music Festival, as well as being the first prize winner in the Maestro Competition 2017. In 2018, Sophie advanced her music journey further and won first place in the 2018 Rockville Music Competition, first place in the 2018 Metropolitan Music Festivals, and 2nd place in the 2018 Washington National Youth Music Competition. She continued to put effort into her practice and won first in the 2019 Metropolitan Music Festival and placed 2nd in the 2020 NVMTA Concerto Festival. Besides the competition awards, Sophie has also taken the National Piano Playing Auditions for the National Piano Guild each year as a national member. Moreover, in addition to her solo piano achievements, she has also been a part of an award-winning duet partnership, dubbed “Duologue”, with her duet partner Ryan Shin. They have been playing piano duets together since 4th grade, winning first place in their first competition, the 2016 Metropolitan Music Festival Chamber Division. Since then, they have placed first in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 MSMTA Spring Festivals in the ensemble division, and placed 2nd in the 2017 Metropolitan Competition Chamber Division. Recently, they won the grand prize in the Junior Chamber division of the 2022 YMIC International Competition and performed at its Winner Concert at Carnegie Hall in New York in October 2022. In February 2023, they were invited to perform at the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Recently as a winner of the 2023 YMIC Young Artist Audition, Sophie will have her solo piano performance at the Carnegie Hall in New York again in October 2023! Looking towards the future, she is currently preparing more pieces and honing her technical skills to improve in future performances!
You can find Sophie’s 2023 18th Century Music Competition piano performance here.