Biography

A devoted musician of varied interests, Shelley has been pushing her limits as a pianist.  In addition to extensive concerts of piano literature, she continually explores off-the-beaten path pieces like Medtner’s Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor.  In recent seasons, Ms. Ng has centered her place as an interpreter of new music scores and has premiered numerous works.  She also incorporates improvisation into relevant concert repertoire. Ms. Ng’s chamber music expertise has led to performances alongside eminent artists Jacob Greenberg, Michael Webster, Richard Brown, and musicians from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, LA Opera, and San Francisco Opera. She also played unusual repertoire including a recital of Klezmer tunes and a performance of George Antheil’s Ballet Mechanique for four pianists and eleven percussionists.  Pushing towards the outer limits of piano repertoire, she enjoys exploring different keyboard instruments such as the square piano, harmonium, synthesizer, celeste, accordion, toy piano and the harpsichord. 

 

Shelley is a laureate of international competitions such as the International Music Competition Salzburg Grand Prize Virtuoso, Shepherd School Concerto Competition, the St. James Chamber Prize (United Kingdom), and the Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld International String Competition. She appeared as a concerto soloist with the Hong Kong Symphonic Winds, CityU Philharmonic Orchestra and Hong Kong Medical Association Orchestra.  She has also performed for numerous world-renowned artists in masterclasses including Emmanuel Ax, Robert Levin, Peter Serkin, Garrick Ohlsson, Paul Lewis, and Sylvia Rosenberg. 

 

Beyond her regular performance activities, Shelley’s fascination with interdisciplinary collaborations has led her to perform and improvise with dancers of the USC Kaufman School of Dance, London Contemporary Dance School and actors from Television Broadcasts Limited, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and The Shadow Players.  As an avid advocate of outreach programmes, she has performed for diverse audiences including underprivileged children and victims of domestic violence.  She also performed in the UN International Day of Peace Ceremony and Gandhi Peace Concert. In 2016, she curated an autism awareness benefit concert featuring music by composers that showed autistic traits, interspersed with narration from the perspectives of autistic children.

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Shelley is currently associate musician of the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and occasionally works with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong. Prior to her return, Shelley studied at the USC Thornton School of Music in Piano Performance with Bernadene Blaha.  During her studies, she was the staff pianist of studios of Midori Gotō, Pamela Frank, Bing Wang and Margaret Batjer.  Shelley earned her Master’s degrees from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with distinction under the tutelage of Katya Apekisheva and subsequently from Rice University, where she taught piano and chamber music. She was awarded the First Class Honours Bachelor’s in Music from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where she was on the Faculty of Arts Dean’s List in all three years of her studies. Her primary teachers Virginia Weckstrom in the United States, Nancy Loo in Hong Kong and coaches Cho-Liang Lin and Norman Fischer have become important mentors in her music career.