Collaborative pianist Nicole Ying 应卿东方 has built a career at the intersection of artistry, innovation, and service. An active performer, educator, and arts administrator, she is deeply committed to expanding the reach of collaborative piano through performance, teaching, and community engagement.
Equally at home on the concert stage and in the classroom, Nicole has coached singers, instrumentalists, and chamber ensembles, mentoring young musicians across both traditional and contemporary repertoire. A passionate advocate for new music, she has premiered works with ensembles including The Ensemble under Nicholas Deyoe and Christopher Rountree, NOVA under Elizabeth McNutt, UNT Wind Symphony under Eugene Corporon, and has performed landmark pieces such as Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire and Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King. She is the co-founder of duo (i)-ll-us-ion, the world’s first suona–piano duo, which commissioned and premiered multiple works during its residency at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. The duo introduced the first-ever body of repertoire for this unique instrumentation under the mentorship of internationally acclaimed composer Chen Yi and Pulitzer-winning composer Zhou Long.
Nicole has collaborated with leading artists such as Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, Allen Fogel, Lorenz Gamma, Adam Liu, Andrew McIntosh, Mark Menzies, Stephen Miahky, John Michel, Mitchell Newman, Phil O'Connor, Dennis Parker, and Vicki Ray, as well as exceptional musicians from major orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Kansas City Symphony.
Her festival fellowships include the Music Academy of the West, Eastern Music Festival, Mostly Modern Festival, and the Castleman String Quartet Program. She has worked and performed with students from the distinguished studios of Rebecca Albers, Atar Arad, Jeff Bradetich, Victoria Chiang, Hans Jensen, Mark Kaplan, Eric Kim, Robert McDuffie, Amy Schwartz Moretti, Kurt Muroki, Alan Stepansky, Peter Stumpf, Jeffrey Turner, among many others. She also collaborated with students in masterclasses with influential artists such as Timothy Day, Michelle DeYoung, Glenn Dicterow, James Ehnes, Christian Lindberg, Matthew Lipman, Paul Merkelo, Raman Ramakrishnan, and Astrid Schween.
Nicole holds degrees from UCLA (B.A. in Anthropology, minor in Korean), California Institute of the Arts (M.M. in Piano Performance), Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music (Performer Diplomas in Piano Performance and Collaborative Piano), and University of North Texas (D.M.A. in Collaborative Piano with a related field in Music Business). She is the inaugural Artist Diploma candidate in Collaborative Piano at the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University as the Renasant Scholar. Her primary mentors include Anne Epperson, Jean-Louis Haguenauer, Steve Harlos, Kevin Murphy, Ming Tsu, Elvia Puccinelli, and Kyung-A Yoo. She has also worked under the guidance of renowned collaborative piano figures Jean Barr, Jonathan Feldman, Martin Katz, Kathleen Kelly, Ana María Otamendi, and Howard Watkins.
In addition to her artistic work, Nicole is an experienced administrator and advocate. She has served as Advancement Scholar at UNT, Chief Assistant at the Borromeo Music Festival, Social Media/Marketing/Sales staff for the Mostly Modern Festival, and Social Media Director for the Collaborative Piano Institute and ChamberFest at CSUN. Her collaborative piano–focused social media reels have garnered over two million views worldwide, supporting her goal of demystifying classical musician, promoting classical music, and connecting with audiences on a larger scale.
Nicole’s musical journey is also informed by her early studies in anthropology, which continue to shape her collaborative philosophy: music as dialogue, cultural connection, and service. Outside of music, she is an avid reader and traveler, and she currently resides in Georgia with her Shiba Inu, Verse.