Joseph Tong

Joseph Tong enjoys a busy and varied career as soloist, duo pianist, chamber musician, Festival Director and teacher. He studied at Wells Cathedral School, Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music, where his teachers were Hilary Coates and Christopher Elton. Joseph made his Wigmore Hall debut in 1997 as winner of the Maisie Lewis Young Artists Award and made his first CD recording at Hurstwood Farm Studios in Kent the following year. Other competition successes include prizes at the ISM Sheffield Piano Competition, the St Charles International Piano Competition in the USA and 1st Prize in the John Lill Awards in 1996. Joseph has given recitals at the Purcell Room at the South Bank, Steinway Hall (for the Keyboard Trust), the Chopin Society and other London venues including Fairfield Halls, Croydon, St Martin-in-the-Fields, St James’s, Piccadilly, and the Parliament Chamber, Inner Temple. In 2013 he took part in the Guildford International Music Festival, performing Schubert on an 1845 Erard piano at Hatchlands. Other recent recitals have included The Apex in Bury St Edmunds, Carlisle Cathedral, the English-Speaking Union in London, Marden House in Wiltshire and The Woodville, Gravesend. In addition to regular concerts throughout the UK, Joseph has given recital and concerto performances in Germany, Portugal (for the British Council), Italy, Japan, USA, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. He also enjoys giving concerts on cruise ships, regularly being invited to play onboard Braemar, Balmoral and Black Watch for Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines. A longstanding and highly successful piano duo with the Japanese pianist Waka Hasegawa (Piano 4 Hands) has led to broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, WFMT Radio in the USA and recitals at major venues such as Wigmore Hall, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, The Lighthouse, Poole, St George’s, Bristol and numerous festivals including Buxton, Chichester, Cheltenham, Oundle, Bury St Edmunds and the Birmingham International Piano Festival. Piano 4 Hands has made a series of critically acclaimed CD recordings on the Quartz label of Debussy, Schubert and John McCabe. These have been chosen as Album of The Week in The Independent and highly recommended in BBC Music Magazine, Musical Opinion and International Record Review.
Joseph Tong was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in 2008 and also appointed visiting teacher at Wells Cathedral School that year. He is also founder and Co-Director of the Bristol International Piano Duo Festival, held biennially in October at St George’s, Bristol.

Future plans include a second Sibelius CD, concerts in Germany and Finland, at St John’s Smith Square in London (supported by the UK Sibelius Society), Fairfield Halls, Hatchlands in Surrey and St George’s, Bristol as well as a cruise to the Azores with his brother, the pianist Daniel Tong, a series of concerts and study days in Oxford with Daniel and the musicologist Richard Wigmore, and upcoming duo recitals with Waka Hasegawa at the Presteigne Festival, the Purcell Room in London and the Wiltshire Music Centre as well a new commission from David Matthews.