Raymond Yong is known to classical music audiences as a concert pianist and conductor. He has given acclaimed performances at music festivals and concert halls around Australia and internationally, and has enjoyed a wide range of musical partnerships with some of Australia’s finest classical musicians.

Raymond Yong was the subject of a recent television feature screened on ABC TV’s Stateline program, and his live piano performances are regularly broadcast across Australia on the ABC radio network. Recent concert highlights include chamber music performances at the Musica Viva Huntington Festival, the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Linari Classic in Italy, as well as piano concerto engagements with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

As an emerging young conductor, Raymond Yong will make his debut in 2010 as Guest Conductor with the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and will conduct the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Auckland Philharmonia as part of the 2010 Symphony Australia Young Conductor Development Program. For the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, he conducted Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale, and directed local school children in a performance of the Toy Symphony with Orchestra Victoria.

Raymond Yong continues his role as Music Director of the Victorian Youth Symphony Orchestra and takes up the position of Music Director of the Victoria Chorale in 2010. He has been a regular Guest Conductor with a number of orchestras around Melbourne, including the University of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, the Stonnington Symphony, Preston Symphony and the Kooyong Chamber Players.

Raymond Yong has been a major prize winner in many of Australia’s most prestigious music competitions, including the Australian National Piano Award, the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition, the  Mietta Song Recital Award and the Hephzibah Menuhin Piano Competition. He was also a national keyboard finalist in the  Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards.

Raymond Yong studied piano performance and conducting at the University of Melbourne where his teachers were Stephen McIntyre (piano) and John Hopkins (conducting). The award of a German government grant led to three years of music study at the University of Music and Theater in Hannover, where he studied piano performance under Karl-Heinz Kaemmerling, and was awarded the German Artist’s Diploma with highest distinction.

Raymond Yong was a Young Visiting Artist at the Australian National Academy of Music in 2003 and 2004, and has been a guest lecturer and piano teacher at the University of Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

For more information visit www.raymondyong.com