“Art is as Vital to Life as Sleeping and Eating”
On July 6, during the first weekend of the 2025 Garth Newel Summer Festival, GNPQ pianist Jeannette Fang will give a recital titled “The Golden Age,” featuring the premiere of Logan Skelton’s completion of Chopin’s newly discovered waltz along with Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Franck’s Prelude Chorale and Fugue, and Caroline Shaw’s Gustave le Grey. Read Jeannette’s blog post about the concert program to find out more about the music. The concert will be followed by an optional picnic dinner. Book your tickets here.
When GNPQ pianist Jeannette Fang was in college at The Juilliard School, she always said yes when composers asked her to play their new works. Other pianists often declined because of the time and effort required to learn the music. But Jeannette found it worthwhile, and fun.
“It was kind of addictive,” she says. She loved the fact that she got instant feedback on her playing. Living composers can explain what they had in mind about how a piece should be played, but you can never know exactly what a composer from a previous era had in mind. She also enjoyed the collaborative process, since the composers often incorporated her feedback. This attitude is typical for Jeannette—she jumps right in when there’s an opportunity to connect and collaborate, and to learn from the experience.
And that’s exactly what she does at Garth Newel as pianist with the Quartet and co-artistic director, a position she’s held since 2015. From the start, she loved her colleagues, whom she describes as “honest, upfront, and great musicians.” She instantly felt a connection with them, and they have become close friends—family, really—as well as colleagues.
She was struck by Garth Newel’s setting on her first visit and remains entranced with it.
“There is something to be said for making music in a place of unsullied natural beauty, she says. “It influences how you play. It taps into what is true about making music—harmony of nature and harmony of spirit.”
“Like a cheetah attacking a gazelle”
As a performer, Jeannette is dynamic, expressive, and imaginative. She plays with superior technique and control, and with such passion and athleticism that a Garth Newel neighbor and frequent patron says that experiencing one of her performances is like watching a cheetah attacking a gazelle.
Her close friend and colleague, GNPQ violinist Teresa Ling, puts things a bit less dramatically. Having worked closely with her for 10 years, she notes that Jeannette is “amazingly expressive, both musically and physically. She has this extraordinary energy that drives everything she does.”
Colleague and friend
“We are incredibly lucky to have Jeannette as a member of the Quartet,” Teresa comments. “First, she is a phenomenal pianist. She has extraordinary technique and musicality. She’s also a great partner, open to suggestions and ideas, and her commitment to the group is unsurpassed. I cannot imagine a better colleague.”
“She’s incredibly warm and caring,” Teresa continues. “She’s always the first one to ask how you’re doing if she knows someone’s experiencing challenges. If someone asks her to do something, she never says no; she goes right at it and does it well, somehow fitting it into her already busy day.”
Jeannette is also known for being smart and resourceful. If she doesn’t know how to do something, she figures it out. She comes up with creative solutions. For instance, during the Covid pandemic when the Quartet couldn’t play together in person, Jeannette suggested that each member record themselves playing in their own homes, and she stitched it all together into a video they could share online.
“Jeannette is so thoughtful, so conscientious, so creative, so kind and nurturing,” says Teresa. “She also has a wacky sense of humor and is really fun to talk to. I am continually awed by Jeannette. She’s more than an ideal colleague, because I could never have imagined that all of her amazing qualities could actually exist in one person!”
A passion for new music
Working with composers and learning new music remains a passion for Jeannette.
“I love new music. I love composers, and the fact that they ask me to play their stuff. I love finding works that are surprising and different and creative.”
One of Jeannette’s roles at Garth Newel is running the International Composition Competition, whose purpose is to broaden the piano quartet repertoire and to fulfill GNMC’s commitment to contemporary music.
“Audiences for classical music are shrinking,” she notes. “Without new material that is played and supported, classical music would cease to have a place in society. Plus, always playing the canon can get boring.”
“As musicians and composers, we’re constantly expanding the capabilities of what our instruments can do. If we don’t actively embrace that, piano playing will be limited to a single time period instead of coming along with us as we progress. For instance, we play Bach on modern instruments. He would probably love it, and certainly wouldn’t have wanted his music to be frozen to the smaller range of period instruments if the range of a modern piano existed.”
The particular appeal of the piano quartet
A professional piano quartet is something of a rare thing. When many people think of chamber music, they often think first of string ensembles, in which the strings as a set have a sound that blends. Jeannette says this is part of what makes a string quartet so appealing. And there are many piano trios (ensembles with piano, violin, and cello); with the addition of the viola, a piano quartet brings a richer sound.
Jeannette explains, “The percussive nature of the piano means it cannot blend with the strings in the same way as a string quartet. But the juxtaposition, I think, makes for a more compelling and more interesting chamber music experience. The sound is bigger, expanding the variety and possibilities of expression.”
The piano quartet is a genre Jeannette believes should be explored and written for more. “It should be used as an opportunity to explore the differences between the two types of instruments—to explore the contradictions and juxtapositions. When you create conflict and then resolve it, it makes things more interesting.”
The path to Garth Newel
Jeannette grew up in a musical family in New Jersey. Her mother is a piano teacher, and her older brother is a cellist. As a very young child, she would listen to what her mother’s students played and then try to play the same thing.
“As a kid, I was shy,” she says. “With the piano, I was never shy.”
Recognizing that Jeannette needed a teacher other than her mother, her parents sent her to Juilliard Preparatory as a teenager, and she continued on there as an undergraduate. Despite her parents’ desire for her to seek a different profession (born of their love for her, knowing how challenging the life of a professional musician can be), for Jeannette there was never any question that she would make music her life’s work.
After Juilliard, she went on to earn her master’s degree and Artists’ Diploma at Yale, and her doctorate at the University of Michigan.
Then, she needed to find a career path that suited her, which is easier said than done. As a pianist, she knew that there were no orchestral jobs as there were for other instrumentalists. A university job would mean expending much of her time on teaching, and, while she finds great satisfaction in working with young artists, she wanted to be able to perform more than teach.
So, she hoped to become part of a chamber ensemble, a role in which she would be able to perform frequently and have a level of artistic control. Garth Newel fit the bill perfectly, and the rural location was a plus. “I don’t like a lot of hustle and bustle. In New York, I constantly got distracted.”
And so, when she saw the job announcement for the position at Garth Newel, she applied. It ended up being the perfect home for her. “I am lucky!” she says.
About those red shoes
Anyone who’s seen Jeannette perform remembers her red shoes. It may seem like she’s making a major statement, but in actuality, it’s a tradition that just sort of happened. She wore red shoes for a concert she gave in graduate school in which she played a new composition by a fellow student. Afterward, his composition professor—the renowned Chinese composer Bright Sheng—told her she should always wear them when she performed.
“When Bright Sheng gives you fashion advice,” she quips, “one should always listen.”
The same thing happened when she first played at Garth Newel. And so she has continued through the years, often getting a positive response from audience members about the red shoes. She now has four pairs of them.
Life beyond the music
Jeannette may say that she has “a pretty monotrack mind” and plays and thinks about music “all the time,” but she clearly loves putting her talent and smarts to other purposes as well. Like puzzles and word games, for instance.
Once, the Quartet was doing a short residency in Northern Virginia and staying in a large house together. The four musicians decided to play a game of Scrabble. Knowing that Jeannette is an avid player, the other three teamed up against her. And lost badly. It turns out that she had memorized all the two-letter words in the Scrabble dictionary—and could leverage that knowledge into lots of points.
Jeannette has three cats she loves, and she enjoys making things for them. She is skilled at building fun cardboard furniture for them, and also for herself and for friends. She uses her creations throughout her home.
“There’s an instant gratification in making physical things,” she says.
Love, family, and friends are also profoundly important to her. It can be difficult for someone in a performing profession to find the right partner, but Jeannette was lucky enough to find the perfect guy in actor Tracy Fisher, whom she describes as “the sweetest and most joyful person to be around.” They married in 2020, and held their ceremony at Garth Newel in 2023.
For photos of furniture, cats, moments, and more, check out her Instagram page, @JeannetteFang.
Advice to young artists
“Don’t worry about your peers,” Jeannette advises. “Do what you do, with absolute focus and dedication. If you worry about what the people around you think, you’ll never fulfill your own desires. Only you know what is right for you.
“Making a career as artist … only do it if you can’t survive without it. There’s always someone who’s better than you; if you get into music because you think you’re good at it, that is not going to sustain you. Having a successful music career is not about whether you win the most competitions. It’s whether you have a need to do it, if you have something to say. You have to feel your art is as vital to life as sleeping and eating.
“I don’t think I’m the best pianist, but I do have something to say. And that’s enough for me.”
