Alex Peh

I remember sitting behind a Yamaha electric keyboard in a group piano class in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was six-years old when I moved to New York City with my family and began taking lessons with Mrs. Lisa Grad. She taught me how to shape a phrase using my open finger tips to sculpt the sound like a piece of clay. I remember how she related everything to the nautilus shell, its spiraling shape was a metaphor for proportion, dynamic shaping, the shape of the hand, the expansion and contraction of the body, and the overtone series...

 

I am a classically-trained pianist, and have used this training to collaborate with musicians globally in search of shared resonances that emerge from friendship and connection. Empowered by my 2021 Fulbright Global Scholar and 2019 Asian Cultural Council fellowships, I have collaborated with some incredible musicians; Claire Chase, Susie Ibarra, Anna Clyne, Kyaw Kyaw Naing, U Yee Nwe, U Thet Oo, Ne Myo Aung, Hafez Modirzadeh, Ramin Zoufonoun, Amir Etemadzadeh, Senem Pirler, and Phyllis Chen. My work has been presented internationally and throughout the United States at Carnegie Zankel Hall, Chulalongkorn Unviersity, Bangkok, Thailand, CB Ballroom, Yangon Myanmar, Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, Greece and the Detroit Institute for the Arts.  

 

I am a founding member of Talking Gong, an improvising trio with percussionist, Susie Ibarra and flutist, Claire Chase. We released our debut album in 2019, Talking Gong, on New Focus Recordings available on all major streaming platforms. Our trio has performed at Public Theater, Roulette Intermedium, and BRIC in New York City.  

 

I seek out pianistic practices that fall outside of the Western European classical tradition. I've travelled to Yangon, Myanmar to study Burmese Sandaya piano, from master pianist Dr. U Yee Nwe. I started my studies in Sandaya from Kyaw Kyaw Naing, an internationally-acclaimed percussionist, and leader of the national Saing Waing orchestra, the classical percussion and gong orchestra of Myanmar. We created a Burmese Saing Waing ensemble, comprising students, faculty and community members at SUNY New Paltz and made our debut performance at Roulette Intermedium, New York City, performing a new composition that Kyaw Kyaw Naing composed for the group entitled Growing Rhythm.  Our concert at SUNY New Paltz was sold out! Over 600 people from our small town wanted to hear Burmese Saing Waing!

 

In 2021 I received a Fulbright Global Scholar fellowship that allowed me to connect with Greek pianist and musicologist Nikos Ordoulidis in Naoussa, Greece; Burmese pianist Ne Myo Aung in Bangkok, Thailand and Pooyan Azadeh in Halle, Germany. Together we created a new album of piano music, Attune, on Habitat Sounds, and a companion ethnographic film Intermittent Attunement in collaboration with Dr. Lauren Meeker, Alyson Hummer and Madelyn Colonna. Excerpts of the film and album were premiered at National Sawdust, Brooklyn NYC. Intermittent Attunement was selected for screening by the Ethnografilm festival in Paris, France at the Club D’Etoile.  

 

I have received numerous grants to support my work such as Arts Midhudson, New York State Council of the Arts Grant, and New Music USA. Notably, I received a National Endowment for the Arts project grant that funded new compositions in afro/asian tuning systems for the piano by Ramin Zoufonoun and Hafez Modirzadeh.  

 

I received my musical training from Indiana and Northwestern Universities where I have been lucky to work with some of the best performers and mentors in the classical music world. I learned from Arnaldo Cohen, Menahem Pressler, Sylvia Wang and Evelyne Brancart. I attended the Banff, Aspen and Tanglewood music festivals where I worked with Emanuel Ax, Pamela Frank, Claude Frank, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and Peter Serkin. I performed Stravinsky’s Les Noces under the baton of Charles Dutoit and the Tanglewood Festival Choir.  Currently I am an associate professor of piano at SUNY New Paltz,.

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