Piano
Biography:
“All singers were partnered by excellent pianist Soh Wei Qi, no mere accompanist but one ever-sensitive to myriad nuances presented in the songs” (Chang Tou Liang, Strait’s Times, Sept 2025) Soh Wei Qi is a Singaporean pianist. His mentors include Mrs. Rena Phua, Ning An, Maestro Sergei Babayan, and Olga Radosavljevich-Gradojevich. He credits his musical style to Elena Berezkina, who has trained a lineage of accomplished pianists, including Evgeny Kissin and Alexander Malofeev.
Wei Qi has participated in both local and international competitions, with extensive achievements. Notably, he advanced to the Final 5 in the 7th Lucien Wang Piano Competition and won the Gold with Honors award alongside his trio partners, violinists Ronan Lim and Joey Lau, at the Raffles Music Competition in 2015. Most recently, in 2017, he won the Best Accompanist Award at the NAFA Vocal Competition and was awarded the Gold Prize in the Nanyang International Music Competition. That same year, he secured 1st prize in the Ipoh Piano Competition. In December 2017, he won the Championship in the Piano Senior Category of the National Piano and Violin Competition. His performance in the Lucien Wang Competition was praised by Dr. Chang Tou Liang as ‘big-boned playing, full of symphonic bluster, full of robust Sturm und Drang’.
Equally proficient as an accompanist and orchestral pianist, Wei Qi collaborates with New Opera Singapore, where he serves as an accompanist for various operatic performances and solo acts. He has also performed with several orchestras, including the NAFA Orchestra, where he played the piano part for Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird, and the Orchestra of the Music Makers, where he was the répétiteur and pianist for Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. Additionally, he has been an accompanist for vocal masterclasses conducted by world-renowned artists such as Vladimir Chernov, Angel Joy Blue, Renee Fleming, Joyce Didonato etc.
In 2015, he was among the few selected worldwide to attend prestigious piano summer programs at both the Cleveland Institute of Music and Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, marking his international debut. In 2018, he was awarded the National Arts Council Scholarship to participate in the Kirishima Music Festival. He subsequently attended the summer program at Gnessins Music School in Moscow, Russia. In 2020, he premiered Singaporean composer Zhang Kangyi’s Postcards from Singapore in Kraków, Poland.
What do you like most about CIMC?
What I appreciate most about the Charleston Music Competition is its rare balance of warmth and rigor. It offers young musicians a platform that is professionally run yet deeply encouraging, where artistry is valued as much as technical polish. The atmosphere feels less about comparison and more about growth—students are heard thoughtfully, adjudication is constructive, and the overall experience affirms music-making as a meaningful, human pursuit rather than a purely competitive one.