Kính T. Vũ is an assistant professor of music at Boston University where he teaches music education and fine arts courses such as general music methods, instrumental music lab, and intra-disciplinary arts seminars. During a recent sabbatical, Kính began to theorize how salvation narratives are embedded into transnational/transracial adoption and music education, particularly for Asian American adoptees who are music teachers. Kính is the subject of a one-hour documentary called Song of Earthroot (2023) in which he speaks and sings about the conundrum of simultaneously identifying as Asian, American, Asian American, and none of these whatsoever. Along with André de Quadros, Kính was lead editor of the first- ever text on the displacement within the music education field called My Body Was Left on the Street: Music Education and Displacement (Brill–Sense 2020). Travel, running, weight training, and sparkly objects—glitter included—are his obsessions.

Brian Ganz is widely regarded as one of the leading pianists of his generation. Mr. Ganz shared first prize in the 1989 Marguerite Long Jacques Thibaud International Piano Competition and was third prize-winner of the 1991 Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Piano Competition. He has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the St. Louis Symphony, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the National Symphony (USA), the National Philharmonic, the City of London Sinfonia, and the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra. Among the conductors he has performed with are Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop, Mstislav Rostropovich, Jerzy Semkow and Yoel Levi.

The Washington Post has written: “One comes away from a recital by pianist Brian Ganz not only exhilarated by the power of the performance but also moved by his search for artistic truth.” For many years Mr. Ganz has made it his mission to join vivid music making with warmth and intimacy onstage to produce a new kind of listening experience, in which great works come to life with authentic emotional power. As one of Belgium’s leading newspapers, La Libre Belgique, put it, “We don’t have the words to speak of this fabulous musician who lives music with a generous urgency and brings his public into a state of intense joy.”

In January of 2011 Mr. Ganz began a multi-year project in partnership with the National Philharmonic in which he will perform the complete works of Fryderyk Chopin at the Music Center at Strathmore. After the inaugural recital, The Washington Post wrote: “Brian Ganz was masterly in his first installment of the complete works [of Chopin].” His February 2025 performance marked the penultimate recital of the series. The final recital will take place on April 11 of 2026.

Mr. Ganz is on the piano faculty of St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where he is artist-in- residence, and recently retired, after 21 years, from the piano faculty of the Peabody Conservatory. He is the artist-editor of the Schirmer Performance Edition of Chopin’s Preludes (2005). Pre-pandemic performance highlights include Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Alba Music Festival in Italy and with the National Philharmonic at Strathmore, Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 466 with the Annapolis Symphony and Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with the Billings Symphony (now viewable on YouTube). In September of 2019, he made his debut as an actor and playwright at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Freer and Sackler Galleries. The play imagined a dialogue between American artist James Whistler and a musician who explores the connections between Debussy’s music and the artist’s “10 O’Clock Lecture.” Included in the play are portions of the lecture itself along with performances of the music of Debussy and composers under his influence. Most recently, Mr. Ganz performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in April 2024 with the Virginia Chamber Orchestra at the recently opened Capital One Hall in Northern Virginia, and in October he joined the Annapolis Symphony both in Annapolis and at the Strathmore Music Center in a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major, K. 488.