On the Fauré piano quartet performance：
"...there was a delicacy to Zhang’s approach to the keyboard that set the tone for a more subdued rhetoric. This was a rhetoric of transparency in which the multiple voices of the piano passages are complemented by those of the string trio. The result was an abundance of minor-key expressiveness that did not have to resort to excessive agitation, an interpretation of Fauré with a satisfying account of the unique characteristics of his compositional voice."
SanFranciscoExaminer.com
Chinese-born Canadian pianist Sophie Xuefei Zhang enjoys a career both as soloist and chamber musician. She has appeared on stage with Kim Kashkashian, Jean-Michel Fonteneau, Ian Swensen, Bonnie Hampton as well as members of the Juilliard String Quartet, Ives String Quartet, American String Quartet, Windscape, and Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, among others. Sophie has served as artist-in-residence with her piano duo, Duo Solis (with pianist Olivier Hébert-Bouchard) at Conservatoire de musique et d'art dramatique du Québec for the 2012-2013 season, and ensemble-in-residence with Aleron Trio on San Francisco's Old First Concert Series for the 2014-2015 season. She is co-founder and artistic director of Lex54 Concerts.
First-place winner of the national Canadian Music Competition, Sophie was also the First-place winner of the Beijing district of Concours de Piano Sino-Francais "MIDO" and semi-finalist of the 12th Pacific International Piano Competition. Sophie was a winner of the Felix Galimir Chamber Music Award and was on full scholarship to attend the Chamber Music program at The Banff Centre. Concert appearances include venues such as Beijing Concert Hall, Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University, Carnegie Hall, Toronto's Arts and Letters Club, Toronto Centre for the Arts, Rolston Recital Hall at The Banff Centre, CBC's Glenn Gould Studio, Berkeley Piano Club, Canadian Opera Company's Richard Bradshaw Theatre, and Nicholas Roerich Museum. Sophie has also been heard on Beijing Classical Music Radio Station FM97.4, CBC Radio Soundstreams Canada, and Banff Centre Radio Station. She has been named an Osher Foundation Scholar.
An active educator, Sophie has presented out-reach programs and lecture-recitals with various chamber groups on topics ranging from the piano trios of Schumann and Shostakovich to the transcriptions of Verklärte Nacht by Arnold Schoenberg; and has given lecture-concerts at Duke University (Kunshan), Tsinghua University, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has also led masterclasses for the Alexander String Quartet at San Francisco State University and coached chamber ensembles from the Crowden School in Berkeley. She currently serves as piano faculty at Turtle Bay Music School and Geneva Conservatory of Music, teaches applied lesson at Columbia University, is adjunct faculty at CUNY Medgar Evers College, and is also a lecturer at MoMA The Museum of Modern Art.
Aside from piano, Sophie found another media for artistic expression in photography. In 2006, she traveled to Tibet and produced a set of photos during the travel. Selections of this set have been published in the book "Tibet, the Life Changing Journey" (Shantou University Press 2010). Sophie's work has also been put on auction at the International Women and Children's Health Conference to raise money to support local initiatives in women and children's health.
Sophie graduated with honors from University of Toronto with a bachelor degree in Piano Performance and a minor concentration in Fine Art History, and obtained her Master of Music degree from Manhattan School of Music as a scholarship student of Solomon Mikowsky. She also holds an Artist Certificate in Chamber Music from San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Mack McCray. Sophie is currently pursuing her doctorate degree in Music and Music Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.