Online coverage "Piano virtuoso Angela Cheng joins Vetta for all-Dvořák gala concert", featured in Vancouver's digital magazine, Stir, May 5, 2022
Acclaimed pianist Angela Cheng comes from a musical family: her grandfather started a factory making violins in China that still exists, and his nine children and their kids were all expected to take piano or violin lessons. Classical music filled their home, and she spent time at the keys with her mom and aunts. After Cheng’s family moved to Edmonton when she was in elementary school, they didn’t have a piano at home, and she recalls how, in this new land, she felt utterly lost without it.
“I remember asking my mom if we could get a piano,” Cheng tells Stir on the line from Ohio, where she’s a professor of piano at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. “I was miserable not speaking the language—I was a very good student, but I was failing because of the language—and having no friends. I had no more aunts to study with, and I needed the piano. I needed it.
“She arranged it and found me a teacher,” she says. “I didn’t have a piano, but I had a teacher, and it was a big step. The more I studied, the more I knew this had to be my life.”