All Longy students present full recitals as part of their education and ongoing evolution as artists. They are charged with thinking critically about what stories they tell, whose voices to amplify, and who’s in the room for their event while also considering how to use performance spaces in innovative ways and how to truly engage audiences and create interactive music experiences.
Ni Dong is a student of Renana Gutman.
“I learned Eight Memories in Watercolor at end of 2019, but I did not have a chance to perform it because the pandemic started at that time. Tan Dun wrote this piano suite Eight Memories in Watercolor, Op.1 while he studying at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1978. This piano suite integrates traditional Chinese folk music and western modern technical skill. This piano suite evokes the memory of my family in China. The first song Missing Moon brings the memory of when my entire family watched the moon together at the Mid-Autumn Festival back. And the fifth song, Red Wilderness, described the endless gobi desert that surrounds my hometown to me.”
As a pianist who is pursuing passionate and insightful playing, Ni Dong has performed in the U.S. and China as a symphonic pianist, recitalist, and collaborative artist. Also, Ni is a piano teacher in the U.S. and China.
Ni played at venues like the Ohio Wesleyan University, Brooklyn Music School in New York City, Shanghai Library in China, and Shanghai Yujian Art Museum in China as a soloist. She worked with Ohio Wesleyan University Symphonic Wind Ensemble during her undergraduate years as a pianist, organist, and percussionist. And she worked with vocalists and other instrumentalists at Ohio Wesleyan University and Longy School of Music of Bard College. Also, she played with the Asbury United Methodist Church Choir for a year in Delaware, Ohio. And currently, she is playing at Hill Memorial Baptist Church.
A native of China, Ni started playing at the age of four, and soon after, garnered multiple awards and honors in China. She came to the U.S. to study in 2016. She completed her Bachelor of Music degree at Ohio Wesleyan University, OH, where she studied with Gulimina Mahamuti and Frank Chiou. Ni honored in the Senior Music Performance award and the Pi Kappa Lambda Award during her undergraduate years. She is a diligent pianist and was honored with Agnes Fowler Collegiate Scholarship in 2019. Ni is studying at the Longy School of Music of Bard College for her Master of Music degree now with Renana Gutman.
Thanks to our partnership with the Massachusetts Cultural Council and their “Card to Culture” program, Longy School of Music of Bard College can offer free tickets to many of our diverse and innovative performance offerings. See the full list of participating “Card to Culture” organizations offering EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare discounts.