International superstar pianist Lang Lang visited Classical IPR for a special interview ahead of his performance at Interlochen Center for the Arts.
Lang Lang’s appearance in northern Michigan launches the Shirley Young Distinguished Artist Series, a new initiative bringing world-class classical musicians to Interlochen each summer.
As part of his residency during the final week of Interlochen Arts Camp 2025, Lang Lang led a master class for piano students, rehearsed with the World Youth Symphony Orchestra (WYSO) and will perform George Gershwin’s "Rhapsody in Blue" with WYSO on Saturday, August 2.
Classical IPR's pre-show coverage begins Saturday at 7 p.m ET, with the concert downbeat at 7:30 p.m. ET.
The performance will be conducted by Cristian Măcelaru, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of WYSO, Music Director Designate of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and Interlochen alum. Also on the program are selections from John Williams’s film scores, performed by both the Interlochen Philharmonic and WYSO under the batons of Măcelaru and Louis Langrée.
Superstar pianist Lang Lang first heard "Rhapsody in Blue" on the radio as a child and refined his performances with help from jazz greats Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. He'll perform it with Interlochen's World Youth Symphony Orchestra this weekend.
Listen to Lang Lang's interview with Classical IPR's Christy L'Esperance in this post or in your favorite podcast platform, or read the edited transcript below.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Christy L’Esperance: You are the inaugural Shirley Young Distinguished Artist Series guest with this performance at Interlochen. This series is part of Interlochen’s Centennial Celebration, which is coming up in 2028. Is this your first time in northern Michigan?
Lang Lang: It's actually my debut at Interlochen. It is very, very exciting. I've always heard about this amazing school and amazing festival, but I just never had a chance to play here.
CL: You performed Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue” at the 50th Grammy Awards in 2008. Many of these Interlochen musicians [in this year's World Youth Symphony Orchestra] were also born in 2008. That same year, you started the Lang Lang International Music Foundation, whose mission is that all children should have access to music and music education regardless of their backgrounds or circumstances.
Here we are again with the “Rhapsody in Blue” in 2025, marking an opportunity to look back over the last 17 years, a lifetime thus far for these students, and a lifetime thus far of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. How has your work with young musicians developed over these 17 years?
LL: Wow, it’s already been 17 years. We already have more than 200 public schools around the world taking our music class, the Keys of Inspiration. And nearly a hundred wonderful young pianists have studied under our Young Scholars programs. They have become great pianists around the world, touring and teaching at every major conservatory. We're really proud that we're now coming to Interlochen to work with this wonderful organization to keep building up some new initiatives.
CL: Fifteen gifted pianists from your Young Scholars program visited Interlochen earlier this summer. They performed all across Northern Michigan. They studied here. They recorded right here at IPR. I had the pleasure of speaking to each one of them, interviewing each one of them individually and getting to know them as individuals. [note: those interviews and studio recordings will be featured on IPR’s Intermezzo starting August 11, 2025]
One thing that I noticed about these students was that they're not limited to only piano training. These are well-rounded young people with so many different interests. What's your personal view on balancing music and all that it takes to become a very good musician with the rest of life as a teenager and a young person?
LL: In order to become a good musician, you have to not only play piano well, but also understand other meaningful subjects. My scholars are all very multi-talented people. They're really good at math and literature, in different languages and history and art as well as composing and sports in other instruments. And they talk very well. Most of them can really express their heart to people like the way they play the piano. These are important abilities to have in the 21st century in order to become a great classical musician.
CL: Are there any particular stories or encounters that stick with you from watching these young people over the last 17 years?
LL: I especially get very inspired by the regular high school and elementary school students. Some of the kids never had a chance to learn any instrument, but somehow when they start learning piano, when they start composing a song, they become wonderful, creative people. Music really changed their life, and they're so much more positive about their future. Their communication with other school subjects is also so much better. It's just a kind of life-changing experience, and I see so many of them having this change during the sessions over the years.
CL: You are a dad. Your household is very musical. Where are you right now as a family on the role that you hope music will play?
LL: My son is four and half. He's learning drums. He really loves percussion, and he likes to do a bit of a street dance. Quite different than what I do and what my wife does. She's a classically trained pianist, but she also does songwriting. In a way, I think he got a lot of influence from her. But he loves piano, and I'm sure eventually he will learn, but I don't know how serious he will be. I see there is a passion for piano, but it's hard for him to sit still.
I mean, when I was four and a half, I had already played concerts, but, he likes to move around. It's hard for him to sit. But it will come. I think maybe next year he will start taking some lessons.
CL: How will you ever find a teacher to teach Lang Lang’s son? Or will you be the teacher?
LL: No, I will not be the teacher, but we'll find someone wonderful, really kindhearted and who really knows how to deal with kids. He doesn’t need me in the beginning. He needs someone who has good patience and who loves kids.
CL: You have inspired the “Lang Lang effect.” You inspire people just through your own performances to want to play the piano, to want to take lessons. But you go a step farther and provide pianos to schools and provide teaching materials to schools.
LL: We have 200 schools, and each school has 20 to 30 digital smart pianos. Every kid can have a chance to not only listen to what the teacher's telling them, but they can play by themselves at the same time. And this is something that we have to get to more schools. Many of our schools, they're not in the big cities. They're in the suburbs or in the more disadvantaged areas.
CL: Musical passion doesn't discriminate. It can be found anywhere and you never know where the next person is whose brain will light up at the piano. You just have to bring it to them.
LL: Yes. I would never have made a career if I didn't have luck, and the talent and the great teachers around the world. The chances are even more flexible because with the new technologies based on social media, you can discover kids much easier than it was 30 or 40 years ago. You just see somebody so great from India or Africa just learning piano on social media or YouTube or TikTok.
I was recently in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Many of the kids never had proper training, but they play music. I asked, how did you do it? And they said they just watch piano lessons online. That's how they started. And they can already compose some music. I was like, Wow, the talents are really everywhere.
But then, you know, when you have a more serious organization, you can help them to develop with a more professional way of learning. But the love from the beginning, it wasn't academic things, it was just pure passion.
CL: Can we talk about the Gershwin “Rhapsody in Blue”? It is firmly rooted in the vernacular of popular culture as well as classical culture in the US. What draws you to this piece?
LL: For me, I first heard about this piece a long time ago on the radio station in China. And I was like, what type of music is that? Is that classical music? Or jazz music? I was like eight or nine years old when I heard it, and so for me, this was like a new beginning of something. This is an American music with a kind of a bridge between classical and jazz and pop music.
I like the piece very much, but the first time I really felt something going on was with Herbie Hancock during the Grammys show. He showed me so many rhythm things, which, as a classical pianist, you probably never thought about before. He showed me how to kind of reverse the beats and to make something completely fresh.
I was really stunned by that creative way of thinking. And for him, he's like, oh, this is very normal, this is what the jazz musician does. He said, that's why it's good that we're doing it together because you can do it in some kind of classical way, but I can do it in a different way.
Years later, I played "Rhapsody in Blue" with another jazz pianist, Chick Corea. And he showed me some kind of Latin way of making a few cadenzas, and that's another way of learning this piece. Now, when I play “Rhapsody in Blue,” I feel a lot of things that I have learned from Herbie and from Chick Corea that really shows very well in music making, which is kind of jazz and kind of classical.
I also try to share the experience with the orchestra and see whether we can come into a new way of playing this piece. Every time I play this piece, I find something else. This is the great thing about the piece. You can do a lot of improvisations.
One thing is that you have to not play this piece too loud. This is one of the problems with the “Rhapsody in Blue,” is that sometimes it's getting too wild. Then there's no balance. In the rehearsal today with our wonderful maestro [Cristian Macelaru] and the World Youth Orchestra, we were very careful with the sound and the accent. I think it’s going to be wonderful.
IPR thanks Christine Roberts, Brent Wrobel and Raina Parsons for their support with this interview.
