Shelby Wong, 19, is a senior studying piano performance at the USC Thornton School of Music. She gave her first public piano performance at age 4 and played at the International Young Musician Concert in Cambridge, England when she was 8 years old. Shelby has won numerous top awards including Gold Medal at the Seattle International Competition, Saddleback College Concerto Competition, SYMF Young Pianist, OCSA Symphony Concerto Competition, South Coast Symphony Young Stars of the Future, Young Muse International Competition, and USC Concerto Chamber Orchestra Competition 2017 and 2018. Shelby has also been specially featured by USC Thornton in the launch of their ‘New Classical’ campaign.
Shelby appears frequently on stage for solo concerts and recitals, as well as a soloist performing concertos with several different symphony orchestras. She has played in Disney Hall and Segerstrom Hall, and out of state in the Seattle International Music Festival, Cambridge International Young Musician Concert in England, Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy, Lyon Music Festival in France, as well as performing in Vienna, Slovakia, Prague, and China. This past February, Shelby traveled to Oslo, Norway as part of a week-long exchange program with the Norwegian Academy of Music.
Besides piano, Shelby has also continued pursuing her violin studies at USC, playing with the Thornton Symphony under conductors Carl St. Clair and Sharon Lavery. She is the former concertmaster of OCSA Symphony, former principal second violin for the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra, and has served as both concertmaster and principal second violin for USC’s Concerto Chamber Orchestra.
Shelby will be graduating in May 2020 with Bachelor of Music in piano performance from USC.
