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SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Simone Sebastian, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, March 15, 2004

PROFILE: Chloe Pang
Orinda girl, 12, has the keys to success

Twelve-year-old pianist Chloe Pang would rather not be called a prodigy.

Sure, at just 8 years old she was the youngest soloist to debut at Walnut Creek's Bosendorfer Hall. And, come April, she will be the youngest person to record Bach's "Goldberg Variations" -- a piece frequently named among the most ambitious and complex ever composed for the keyboard.

But ask Chloe what makes her special, and she replies, "I'm not really sure."

The Orinda seventh-grader's humility is almost as impressive as her talent. Despite the slew of national and international awards under her tiny belt, Chloe says, "I don't like to be raised up. I'm just a normal kid."

A week ago, this normal kid from Orinda smiled and waved for New York paparazzi as she left "The Late Show With David Letterman."

The late-night talk show host invited Chloe to perform after she won top prize in the prestigious Pinault International Competition. She faced-off against more than 100 other young pianists from around the world in a yearlong application process, culminating in a performance at New York City's Columbia Artists Management Hall six weeks ago.

The show aired March 5, but just a week after her five minutes of witty repartee with Letterman, the unassuming preteen struggles to remember exactly what happened that night.

Zinging the zinger

Letterman asked Chloe about her braces. She asked him about his love of yoga. He laughed. Letterman had made a sarcastic comment about the popular exercise in an earlier show. Chloe, a yoga practitioner, didn't catch Letterman's wit -- she's usually in bed when his show airs.

"He was cracking up. She really got him," explains Chloe's mother, Elena Pang. "He was joking, but she really loves yoga."

She also loves Pilates, Audrey Hepburn and John Steinbeck -- not to mention Bach and Mozart.

Whether she's playing a more contemporary Debussy piece or classical Beethoven, Chloe's fingers dance across her black 9-foot Steinway piano with miraculous grace and virtuosic form.

Though the performing venues have grown progressively larger -- culminating in her performance on Letterman for a television audience of millions -- over the years, Chloe's nerves have not once been shaken.

"Nervous," Chloe says, "is not a word in the Pang vocabulary."

Neither is prodigy. Elena Pang hates the word.

"It connotes negative things -- someone who's not normal, someone who has no childhood," she said.

Outkast on her CD player

Chloe practices for four hours each day but insists the other 20 are spent doing normal stuff. Her CD player is more likely to be playing the latest hit by the rap duo Outkast or soulful singer Norah Jones than anything by Mozart or Beethoven.

She likes skiing and Alfred Hitchcock movies. In her free time, she likes beading with hemp.

"The legal kind," she assures.

But Chloe, who dreams of traveling the world as a concert pianist, admits that nothing quite compares to performing for an audience. "It's relaxing, fun, exciting," she says, her silver braces constantly exposed by her smile.

The petite pianist has been a performer since the womb, her mother says. Whenever Elena Pang, a piano teacher, would play Bach's work, Chloe would start to kick.

"The doctor told me, 'Sweetie, they're just hiccups.' But she had impeccable rhythm," Elena Pang says.

Artistic genes

Since birth, Chloe has been immersed in art. Her grandmother is an accomplished abstract artist. Her mother plays piano and her 8-year-old brother, Clark, plays cello. Chloe's father, she says, "plays the stereo."

Chloe began studying piano under her mother's instruction at 4 years old. By the time Chloe was 8, the mother-daughter relationship was making the teacher-student relationship difficult. Elena Pang asked James Arthur Gardner, a Walnut Creek pianist known for producing accomplished young musicians, to hear Chloe play a Hayden concerto.

"Of course I was impressed and wanted to teach her. Any teacher would be crazy not to want to have a crack at it," Gardner says. But, he admitted, he did not immediately mark Chloe as prodigy material.

"I thought, 'She does need a little tweaking here and there,' " says Gardner. "I wouldn't have picked her out to play as well as she does."

Honors collected

But Chloe would not be deterred, and a collection of awards and special appearances followed.

At age 11, Chloe won the national Pacific Chamber Symphony Concerto Competition, besting pianists nearly twice her age. In December, she competed in National Public Radio's "From the Top" Competition and won. In June, she will compete in the prestigious international Gina Bachauer Junior Piano Competition, an event the Pangs call "the American Idol" of piano.

"She has remarkable skills and a connection with the audience. That charisma, that magic -- people completely lose it when they hear her," Gardner says.

"I have some students who are very good, but they become very humble when Chloe walks into the room," Gardner says. "They know the goddess has entered."

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Classical 102.1 KDFC
Local talent 'From the Top'
December 8, 2003

She began performing at age 4, made her orchestral debut with the Pro Art Symphony at age 10, and, now all of 12, has numerous awards and prizes. On Sunday morning, Orinda's Chloe Pang will perform before her biggest audience yet: national radio listeners.

Pang is one of the gifted young musicians featured this week on "From the Top," airing Sunday morning at 9 on Classical 102.1 KDFC. The engaging program, hosted by renowned pianist Christopher O'Riley, showcases the stories and musical performances of exceptional young classical musicians from across the country.

On the strength of an impressive demo tape, Chloe was flown to Boston to participate in the show, which was taped before a live audience in October. Until a letter arrived last Summer, "I had no clue they were going to have me," she says. "It was an amazing experience."

It was her first visit to Boston, but Pang, who began playing piano at age 5, was right at home on the set. "I love performing, it's just so exciting to be on stage," she told KDFC about her presentation of Debussy's Movement from Images. "It is a great feeling, to work so hard and then be able to share the music with the people."

Her first piano teacher was her mother Elena, who says Chloe started playing the piano as early as she could sit up. "It was her first toy," says Elena. Now, with her mother teaching piano all day and her little brother, Clark, practicing cello, the house is full of music all the time. "But the chaos just heightens my concentration," says Chloe.

What's next for the Walnut Creek Christian Academy student? She is right back at work, prepping for her first CD and also an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in February. The four hours of daily rehearsal are clearly worth the effort. "It's about performing from your heart, and making people happy," she says. "And I love the applause!"

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12-Year-Old Korean American Pianist to Play on Late Show
Korea Times
By Reuben Staines
Contributing Writer

About 5 million people will be watching in the United States alone when 12-year-old Korean American pianist Chloe Pang takes the stage on "The Late Show With David Letterman" on Friday. But the young classical music prodigy isn't feeling nervous, in fact, she says she can't wait.

"I love performing , the bigger the audience, the more exciting it is for me," she told The Korea Times.

Pang, who lives in Orinda, California, said sharing her music with a large audience makes the two to four hours of piano practice she does each day worthwhile.

"It's not really 'fun' performing in your own living room. The audience makes everything so rewarding."

Friday won't be the first time Pang has played in front of a big crowd. Since giving her first public performance at age four, she has accompanied several top orchestras, won numerous awards and played on National Public Radio.

For her appearance on "The Late Show," Pang will play Bach's Goldberg Variations. She is the youngest pianist to record the complex masterpiece, which will be released as her debut album this summer.

Letterman invited her on the show after she played at Columbia Artists' CAMI Hall in New York on Jan. 31 as a top prizewinner of the Pinault International Competition.

Pang's father, Unsong Marcus Pang, immigrated to the U.S. as a child in 1968, and the young piano maestro said she would love to visit Korea to perform and meet relatives.

She comes from a talented family, including grandmother Bai Young-Sun, an internationally exhibited abstract artist; mother Elena Bai Pang, an accomplished pianist who graduated from Juilliard; and eight-year-old brother Clark, an award-winning cellist.

A piano was Pang's "first toy" and she started tinkling the keys when she learned to sit up at five months old, her mother said.

While she has already achieved a lot in the world of classical music, Pang seems to have even bigger ambitions. "It is my dream to record and perform all over the world. I want to unite people through music," she said.

Pang's appearance on "The Late Show," alongside actor Ben Stiller, will screen locally on AFN next Monday at 11:30 p.m.

rjs@koreatimes.co.kr
03-02-2004 19:54
Chloe Pang

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