Global odyssey: behind the artistry of Angela Cheng

American Music Teacher, Feb-March, 2005 by Andrew Hisey

The morning after Election Day 2004, I sat across from Angela Cheng, the Conservatory building still quiet around us, grey mists still lingering on Oberlin's Tappan Square visible through the window behind her. It's remarkable, I thought. This must be the world's most balanced woman. An artist, a mother, a colleague, a wife, a teacher, a daughter, a collaborator--all rolled into one satisfied, smiling, apparently happy individual. In the course of our time together, Angela Cheng's exuberance, passion, laughter, concern and sense of mission surfaced in turn, playing across her face like wind on water.

Music is in her genes, it seems. After a visit to San Francisco, where he fell under the spell of western classical music, Angela's grandfather returned to Guangzhou Province in China to manufacture and sell traditional Chinese and Western instruments. All nine of his children (one of them Angela's mother) learned to play either piano or a string instrument.

At age 3, Angela began piano studies with her mother. With an entire family of music-making relatives surrounding them, a Suzuki-influenced mother-tongue approach almost was inevitable. Not long after, Angela's aunt, a professional piano instructor in Hong Kong, took over her tutelage. Piano study for children was well-established in Hong Kong, and Angela completed her share of the requisite ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) examinations and learned to enjoy performing in community festivals.

Looking for a new and better life, and wanting to leave behind the sorrow caused by the recent deaths of her husband and her mother, Angela's mother struck out in a bold new direction in the early 1970s, moving with Angela and her sister to the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta--a move of 6,500 miles and 32 degrees of latitude! Confronting a new culture, a new language and the harsher climes of the Canadian north, Angela's claim that her mother "was very brave" seems rather an understatement.

But life went on, and Angela speaks of the connections she made during those early years in Canada as precious and affirming. Angela's first Canadian piano teacher, discovered through a cousin, was Vera Shean. With her violinist husband, Shean ran a studio that Angela recalls as something like a second family. Saturday morning piano lessons, theory, chamber music, every-weekend concerts, even a subscription to hear the Edmonton Symphony, inspired the young musician, who practiced every day on a school piano because she had none at home. At age 14, a loaner instrument from the associate concert master of the Edmonton Symphony made it possible to practice at home until Angela was able to purchase her own first instrument with squirreled-away cash winnings from the city's annual Kiwanis Music Festivals.

After summer studies with Robin Wood in Victoria and Marek Jablonski in Banff, Angela pursued her studies with Ernesto Lejano, a former student of Cecile Genhart, who taught at the University of Alberta and the Banff Center. Philippino-born and Canadian-by-way-of-Spain, Lejano has been honored by many of his students as a life-changing influence. He died in 2000, the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Alberta government and from the Congress of the Republic of the Philippines. He was hailed by Menahem Pressler as "one of the most important piano pedagogues in North America." Angela echoes these tributes, citing Lejano as her most important early influence. "He connected things--music and theory--and gave them context, things that had been separate for me until that time. He loved music so much and made music with such enthusiasm, passion, responsiveness."

Of course, "going into music" wasn't an acceptable professional goal, at least not from the family perspective. No intended disrespect to early recognition garnered from musical heavy weights, and never mind the genes--a medical career was what the family had in mind. Recognizing the treasure of Angela's musical talent, Lejano made certain that the young pianist had the opportunity to talk with and hear from every professional musician who came through Edmonton, that she received every possible encouragement from those "in the business." Finally, speaking for the family, Angela's uncle gave his blessing for two years to really pursue a career in music. Two years, but no more.

Moving On

Anne Burrows, then Edmonton music critic and teacher, recogized that Angela Cheng needed to "get out of Edmonton." So strong was her resolve, in fact, that she paid for the ticket to New York and the $95 lesson fee that put Angela and Sascha Gorodnitzki in the same orbit at The Juilliard School. Gorodnitzki offered the young Canadian a spot in his studio. This was exciting news, but reality dictated that a one-year deferment intervene, allowing time to raise funds for the venture, in 1979, the humble beginnings of the Anne Burrows Foundation for Young Musicians (ABFYM, first known as the Angela Cheng Foundation) comprised the bake sales, raffles and other community fundraising efforts that, together with a prestigious Canada Council grant, sent Angela to New York. The ABFYM still exists and has helped launch the international careers of such musicians as Juliette Kang, violin; Amanda Forsyth, cello; Jens Lindemann, trumpet; and Leslie Newman, flute.