15-year old Alex Yang was included on CBC’s “30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30” list of 2023 and has won prizes in both international and national competitions, including the Steinway & Sons Special Prize in the 2024 Kaufman International Piano Competition and Second Place and Best Barber Prize in the 2024 Spotlight International Piano Competition. He was a semifinalist in both the 2023 Madrid International Piano Competition and the 2024 Ettlingen International Piano Competition where he was the youngest in the oldest age category. He won prizes in the most prestigious national competitions where he was the youngest competitor: the Grand Prize in the Federation of Canadian Music Festivals Competition of 2022, and his prize included a 90-minute professional performance opportunity with Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance. He also won the Chopin Society Prize, Most Promising Artist Award, and Overall Third Prize in the 2023 CFMTA National Competition; as well as three First Place and 2019 Grand Prize in the Canadian Music Competition (CMC). That same year he also won first in violin.

Alex is a grade eleven student at the Halifax Grammar School. This year he studies at the Juilliard Pre-College in New York with Emanuel Ax and Yoheved Kaplinsky. He has studied piano with Lynn Stodola since he was seven, and in 2023-2024 at the Royal Conservatory (Toronto)’s Pre-College program Phil and Eli Taylor Academy’s Senior Piano Program with Michael Berkovsky. Other studies include Orford Musique Summer Academy with André Laplante, John Perry and David Jalbert; Lunenburg Academy of Musical Performance masterclasses with Jane Coop and Angela Hewitt; CMC Gathering of the Stars with Marilyn Engle and Henry Kramer; and masterclasses with Robert McDonald, John O’Conor, Stephen Beus, and Charles Richard-Hamelin. In 2023 he was the youngest of 10 international pianists invited to participate in a week-long masterclass with Angela Hewitt in the Trasimeno Music Festival Masterclasses (Italy). In the final concert, Alex was praised by music critic Christopher Axworthy for his “remarkable clarity and sense of line on a dynamic rhythmic base of great nobility” as well as his “remarkable sensitivity.”

Alex has performed in many significant concert halls, such as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, Ateneo de Madrid, the Auditorium Maranium in Perugia, Italy, Mazzoleni Hall in the Royal Conservatory, and the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium where he was featured soloist with Symphony Nova Scotia. He has played with other orchestras, including Chebucto Symphony Orchestra, Nova Sinfonia, Toronto Sinfonietta, and the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra, as well as institutions Cecilia Concerts, Musique Royale. Aside from piano, Alex plays violin and also likes badminton, swimming, debating, and computer programming. He has been a regular recipient of scholarships from the Nova Scotia Talent Trust since he was 8 years old.