At 25, when many young people are already building their professional careers, Yue Zheng made a decision that would change the direction of his life.
He went back to school to study the piano.
It was not the beginning of his musical education, nor of his love for music, but it was the moment when a long-held possibility became a commitment.
After earning a degree in economics from McGill University in Canada and a master's degree in music management from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, Yue auditioned for the Manhattan School of Music in New York. He entered its piano performance program in 2023, studying with Ukrainian-born pianist Inesa Sinkevych, and graduated recently.
Now, he has returned to China for his first solo piano tour.
Beginning on Aug 5 in Shenyang, Liaoning province, and running through Sept 20, the tour takes Yue to seven Chinese cities, including Huizhou, Chongqing, Changsha, Taiyuan, Tianjin and Beijing.
Featuring music by Bach, Brahms, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy and Philip Glass, the program spans three centuries and five musical worlds: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionist and Minimalist.
Music was never far away while Yue was growing up. His great-grandfather, Liao Fushu, was a distinguished music theorist, translator and educator from Huizhou, Guangdong province. Deeply engaged with both Chinese and Western music, Liao translated major works on music and was the brother of Qing Zhu (Liao Shangguo), the pioneering composer and theorist often regarded as one of the founders of Chinese art songs.
Theater and concert halls were part of his early environment, and Yue, who was born in 1998 and learned to play the piano at the age of 4, grew up moving between auditoriums, rehearsals and backstage corridors.
Yet he did not initially choose music as a profession.
At McGill, he studied economics, finding the subject intellectually stimulating but gradually realizing that it was unlikely to become his life's work. Instead, he began spending more and more time at the piano, practicing for hours, listening extensively to recordings and exploring the repertoire with a new intensity.
The more he learned, the more certain he became that he wanted to understand the instrument at a deeper level.
"I wanted to see how far I could go as a pianist," he recalls.
That question eventually led him to the Manhattan School of Music. The transition was far from easy. Piano training, he discovered, was not simply a matter of working harder.
"It requires method. You have to think, experiment and make mistakes," says Yue. "Studying economics taught me to look for logical relationships and build a coherent framework of thought. I've come to realize that music works in much the same way.
"Beneath its emotional expression, there is an underlying logic and structure, and understanding that structure allows me to play with greater freedom and depth," he adds.
Leaving the world of economics behind also required courage. Today, that unconventional background remains part of his identity as a musician.
For his first solo tour in China, Yue has designed a program around works that are lyrical, dramatic and capable of drawing listeners into their own musical worlds. The journey begins with Bach and ends with Philip Glass.
In between are Brahms and Schubert, Chopin and Debussy — a sequence tracing changing ideas of order, freedom, individuality and expression.
For Yue, the distance between these composers is precisely what makes the program compelling.
"Bach and Philip Glass are more than 250 years apart, and their techniques are completely different," he says. "But they share a fascination with rhythm, structure and proportion."
His interest in musical discovery extends beyond the traditional canon.
In 2025, Yue performed in eight presentations of 11,000 Strings at New York's Park Avenue Armory, a monumental contemporary work involving 50 pianos and 50 performers. With the audience surrounded by the instruments, the experience was radically different from a conventional solo recital.
It reinforced his belief that contemporary music belongs alongside the great works of the past.
This philosophy is particularly evident in the program's final chapter: Philip Glass.
"Glass' music brings the listener into a radically different sound world," Yue says. "The composer himself has described his music in terms of repetitive patterns, and for me, there is something particularly direct and straightforward about the way these patterns unfold."
Rather than separating the four Glass pieces, Yue performs them continuously, creating a 16 to 17-minute soundscape in which one work flows seamlessly into the next.
The decision is deliberate. Many of Glass' works unfold over much longer stretches, sometimes 30 minutes or even an hour, allowing repetition and gradual transformation to become part of the listening experience. Within the limited time frame of a recital, Yue sees the uninterrupted sequence as a way of coming closer to the composer's artistic vision.
It also creates a striking contrast with the music that precedes it.
"The contrast creates a sense of suspense — as if the concert has suddenly entered another dimension," he says. "I personally love concerts that leave you with that kind of feeling."
For him, that uncertainty is part of the experience — and part of what keeps classical music alive.
"Classical music is not something fixed in the past. It is a form that continues to grow."
