Birth Date: June 14, 1982
Birth Place: Shenyang, Liaoning, China

Lang Lang (born June 14, 1982) is a Chinese pianist who gained international renown for his outstanding technique and expressive playing.

He was born in Shenyang of Manchu ancestry. When he was only two years old, he saw Tom playing piano in The Cat Concerto, a Tom and Jerry cartoon on TV (Tom was attempting the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor composed by Franz Liszt). According to Lang Lang, this first contact with Western music is what motivated him to learn piano. He began lessons with Professor Zhu Ya-Fen at age three. At the age of five, Lang won the Shenyang Piano Competition and performed his first public recital. When he was nine years old, Lang Lang was nearing his audition for Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music, but he had difficulties with his lessons, and was expelled from his piano tutor's studio for lack of talent. His music teacher at his state school noticed Lang Lang's sadness, and decided to comfort him by playing a record of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, K. 330; she asked him to play with the slow movement. This reminded Lang of his love of the instrument. "Playing the K. 330 brought me hope again," recalled Lang. Lang was admitted into the Conservatory, studying under Professor Zhao Ping-Guo. In 1993, Lang won the Xing Hai Cup Piano Competition in Beijing, being awarded first prize for outstanding artistic performance at the Fourth International Young Pianists Competition in Germany the next year. In 1995, at 13 years of age, he played the Op. 10 and Op. 25 Chopin Etudes, at Beijing Concert Hall and, in the same year, won first place at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians' Competition in Japan[, playing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert broadcast by NHK Television. At 14 he was a featured soloist at the China National Symphony's inaugural concert, which was broadcast by CCTV and attended by President Jiang Zemin. The following year he began studies with Gary Graffman and Dick Doran at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

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