“She was the most compelling. She made me listen more than anybody else in the sense that she had her vision, and it was apparent and that was most important.” - BG Independent News
"Reassuring, too, was the presence of a winner of so high a caliber ... [with an] elegant cadenza and all, and it seemed like a down payment on a budding talent from whom more will be heard.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Kasey Shao, Gilmore Young Artist and Steinway Young Artist, has always had a precocious talent for the piano. Following her orchestral debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nezet Seguin as the first place winner of the 2015 Albert M. Greenfield Concerto Competition at the age of 12, Shao has gone on to win the top prizes in the New York International Piano Competition, Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, Hilton Head International Piano Competition, Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and the Princeton University Concerto Competition. She was the Gold Medal Winner in the Classical Music Division of the 2020 National YoungArts Week and has been recognized as a 4 consecutive year Chopin Scholar, Cincinnati MacDowell Artist Grant recipient, Feltsman Scholarship winner, and two time Matinee Musicale Nancy F. Walker Memorial Scholarship winner.
Recent performances include the Richardson Hall at Princeton University, Verizon Hall of the Kimmel Center, the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, Whitney Hall of the Kentucky Center, the New World Center, the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Merkin Hall of the Kaufman Performing Arts Center. Kasey has also performed with the Blue Ash Montgomery Symphony Orchestra under Prof. Michael Chertok, the Louisville Orchestra under Mr. Teddy Abrams, the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra under Mr. John Morris Russell, and the Princeton Symphonia under Dr. Ruth Ochs. She has appeared on a 6ABC, WKRC Local 12, and Cincy Lifestyle special and has also appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Cincinnati Business Inquirer, Oberlin Tribune and Cleveland Classical.
Shao has always been an avid community server and strives to find ways in which classical music can be used as a medium through which education can be made more accessible. For her work in creating a concert series through which fairy tales and stories can be told through music in an effort to reach younger and larger audiences, she was awarded the Davidson Fellow Scholarship and was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts. She also served as a Community Action Fellow during her time at Princeton, creating an orientation program for incoming students focused on community education and advocacy, and currently is a Learning Consultant at the McGraw Center for Learning, helping other students reach academic flourishing at Princeton.
Shao currently attends Princeton University concentrating in Music (composition) with minors in Piano Performance and Engineering Biology on the pre-med track. She studies with Prof. Ran Dank and Prof. Margeret Kampmeier.