Music Department Faculty

Mayron Tsong
Area Head of Piano

Office: 220 Hill Hall
Email: mtsong@email.unc.edu
Phone: 919-843-4629

Mayron Tsong was one of the youngest musicians to complete a Performer's Diploma in Piano from the Royal Conservatory of Toronto at age 16. Since that time, she has performed extensively across the United States, including New York, Chicago, Houston, Denver, Las Vegas, San Francisco, West Palm Beach, South Carolina, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington, Indiana, California, Oregon, Michigan, Louisiana, Arizona, Texas, across Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, China, Taiwan and Russia as a soloist and chamber musician. She has been featured as a soloist with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic (Russia), Symphony North (Houston), the University of North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, the Longview Symphony Orchestra (Texas), the Red Deer Symphony Orchestra (Canada), the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra (Canada), and the University of Calgary Orchestra (Canada) and the North Carolina Symphony (Raleigh).

She has collaborated with renowned artists like James Campbell, Antonio Lysy, George Taylor, Jeffrey Zeigler (of the Kronos Quartet), the Brentano String Quartet and the Miró String Quartet. Ms. Tsong's solo and collaborative performances have been broadcast by CBC Radio Two - Calgary, Radio Canada - Montreal, WDAV – North Carolina, WFMT Radio - Chicago and Radio 4 - Hong Kong. Numerous prizes have included First Prize in the Canadian Music Competitions, the Millenium Prize for Russian Performing Arts, and the prestigious Arts B Grant, awarded by the Canada Council. From 1994-1998, Ms. Tsong was a three-time recipient of The Female Doctoral Students Grant, a competition that encompasses all disciplines nationwide, awarded by the Government of Canada. Dr. Tsong holds graduate degrees in both Piano Performance and Music Theory, and she obtained her Doctor of Musical Arts under the tutelage of John Perry at Rice University.  Her dissertations discuss the piano etudes of György Ligeti.  She has also studied with such renowned musicians as György Sebök, Robert Levin, Marek Jablonski, Anton Kuerti, Marilyn Engle, Dr. Robin Wood, and Charles Foreman.

Having served on faculty at California State University in Humboldt and as Chair of the Piano Area at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, Ms. Tsong is currently Assistant Professor of Piano and Interim Head of Keyboard at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Active as a teacher, clinician, adjudicator and judge in the United States, Canada, China and Hong Kong, Dr. Tsong was Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre, where she was invited to give masterclasses in 2001. In the summers, she has taught and performed at the Sequoia Chamber Music Festival in Northern California, Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan, Lutheran Summer Music in Minnesota, the Young Musicians and Artists Camp in Oregon and Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina. A Steinway Artist, her first solo recording will be released by Centaur Records in 2008.

Dr. Tsong is listed among Who's Who Among American Teachers & Educators and is a member of the performer’s roster of the College Music Society and the North Carolina Touring Artists Directory. Other memberships include the Music Teachers National Association, the Scriabin Society, the Canadian Universities Music Society, Minorities and Women Doctoral Directory, the Canadian Music Centre, and she is an Honorary Member of the Tingshuset Music Society in Sweden, which includes prominent Swedish Artists like Martin Frost and Christian Lindberg in their roster.