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David Oei, piano
David Oei, pianist, was a soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic at the age of nine and has since performed with major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore Symphonies. Mr. Oei is the winner of five Interlochen Concerto Competitions and the Concert Artists Guild, WQXR Young Artists, Young Musicians Foundation and Paul Ulanowsky Chamber Pianists Awards. A perennial fixture on the New York City chamber music scene he has made guest appearances with the Audubon Quartet, Claring Chamber Players, Da Capo Chamber Players, New York Philharmonic Ensembles, St. Luke's and Orpheus Chamber Ensembles and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In recent years he performed the Mozart Concerto No. 20, Brahms Concertos No.1 & No. 2, and Beethoven Concerto No.3 with the Strathmere Festival Orchestra and the Schnittke Concerto with the Washington Square Festival Orchestra.
Founding director of the Salon Chamber Soloists and a founding member of the Aspen Soloists and Intimate P.D.Q. Bach he is also currently a member of the Elysium Chamber Ensemble, Washington Square Festival Chamber Ensemble and the HD Duo with pianist Helene Jeanney, besides enjoying a longtime collaboration with violinist Chin Kim and a new duo with violinist Kinga Augustyn. A former regular artist at Bargemusic and Chamber Music Northwest he has performed at various festivals including Caramoor, Sitka, Bard, Gretna, Seattle, Chestnut Hill, OK Mozart, Washington Square and Kuhmo.
His television credits include Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, CBS News Sunday Morning and the Today Show. Mr. Oei was the Music Director and Production Advisor for Music-Theatre Group's productions of Stanley Silverman and Richard Foreman's Africanis Instructus and Love and Science. He was also the Music Director for the Sundance Theater Workshop production of the Wallace/Foreman opera Yiddisher Teddy Bears. In the summer of '07 he conducted the Washington Square Festival Chamber Orchestra in a Gershwin/Weill concert titled Music as Political Statement .
He has recorded a wide range of chamber works for Delos, ADDA, Vanguard, CRI, Pro Arte, Arabesque, Albany, Grenadilla and New World Records. A very special project was his recording with Lutz Rath of The Lay of Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke by Viktor Ullmann for piano and speaker. In 2010 he released his first duo CD with violinist Eriko Sato titled Five Not-So-Easy Pieces on his new label Prestissimo. He recently released a solo CD of Steven Christopher Sacco's Book of Whimsy for the American Composers Alliance's USA label. This album is available on Amazon and MP3 downloads are available on CD Baby, Amazon, iTunes and Spotify. In 2020 Sacco's Sonata for B flat Clarinet and Piano with clarinetist Amalie Wyrick-Flax was also similarly released by the the ACA.
A former longtime faculty of Summertrios, Hoff-Barthelson Music School and the Mannes College of Music, Mr. Oei is a faculty member of the Chamber Music Conference at Colgate University (formerly Bennington Chamber Music Conference) and the Alaria Chamber Music Program. He is a member of the Alaria Chamber Ensemble, which has presented an annual Weill Recital Hall series for over three decades. In the summer of '14 he served as the director of the Smalls Chamber Music Salon at the Smalls Jazz Club and since '15 he has been the director of the David Oei Classical Salon, a monthly chamber music series at Mezzrow, voted "Best Jazz Club 2015" by the Village Voice. An artist of the New York Classical Music Society he's also the recipient of its 2017 Citation of Honor for his work with the Mezzrow series.
In this pandemic era he and his wife, violinist Eriko Sato, have been busy performing online as a duo. They recently recorded some short videos for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Washington Square Music Festival. Just finished a streaming recital for Concerts on the Slope, which can be found on his YouTube Channel, they’re now preparing for another appearance on Preformances with Allison Charney, scheduled for August 4th, 9pm. Mr. Oei lives in New York City with Eriko and their pit bull Marian.