Named one of Glamour Magazine’s 2008 Top Ten College Women of the Year, pianist and U.S. Arts Envoy Pauline Yang began her piano studies at the age of five and won her first international competition at the age of seven in Washington, DC. At the age of eleven, she made both her Philadelphia Orchestra debut as well as her solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall and entered The Juilliard School, where she won both the Pre-College's concerto and scholarship competitions in her first year.
She has since studied in Vancouver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and throughout Europe. Her concert career has taken her throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Highlights include performances at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, at the Franz Liszt Academy’s Grand Concert Hall in Hungary, and at the Professional Training Workshop on the Chamber Music of Brahms with Leon Fleisher, Pamela Frank, and Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall.
Ms. Yang served on the faculty of Toby and Itzhak Perlman’s Perlman Music Program for nearly ten years in New York, Florida, and Israel. She has also served as a Volunteer Artist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Massachusetts General Hospital.
During her undergraduate studies at the University of Southern California, she was a double-major in piano performance and political science, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, and as a Renaissance Scholar. Ms. Yang received a master’s degree in piano performance from USC as well as a master’s degree in international relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University where she wrote her thesis entitled “Musical Magic: The Roles of Music at the White House and at State Dinners.” She has interned with U.S. Representative Rush Holt (NJ-12th) on Capitol Hill, with Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and with The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Ms. Yang is honored to serve as a U.S. Arts Envoy for the U.S. Department of State and has been sent on public diplomacy tours to U.S. Missions in Japan, Ethiopia, Portugal, Taiwan, Nigeria, and most recently, Belgium where she performed on behalf of the U.S. Mission to NATO in what became the first-ever solo concert at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. She was also a guest speaker and performer at the 2023 International Protocol Education Forum’s panel titled “The Arts and Global Diplomacy” at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
She is a member of the Public Diplomacy Council of America as well as a recipient of the Taiwan Gold Card which was awarded by the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture for her achievements in the field of arts and culture.