UNICEF People

Lang Lang

© UNICEF/040244/Markisz

One of the most exciting pianists of our time, Lang Lang, is UNICEF’s youngest celebrity recruits, becoming a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador on 20 May 2004. “Music is like a language, it’s like a universal language, it has the connection to the people and also the feeling from your soul, from your heart, said Lang Lang on his appointment.  “I think the best way to reach children is to play them music, this really opens their ears and their minds.”

Connecting through music

Acclaimed in major concert halls in North America, Europe and Asia, Lang Lang has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to connect with audiences on a deeply personal level. He has become an ideal ambassador for classical music while acting as a role model for young people. 

Lang Lang will work with UNICEF to bring awareness to the needs and the rights of children throughout the world, focussing on child survival and immunization issues.  His first mission for UNICEF was in August 2004.  He visited Tanzania to help raise awareness about the impact of malaria on children and the efforts being taken by UNICEF and partners to address the situation.

A Child prodigy

Born into a musical family in Shenyang, China, Lang Lang began his piano studies at the age of three, giving his first public recital when he was only five. He entered the Central Music Conservatory of China at age nine. In 1997, accompanied by his father, fifteen-year-old Lang Lang came to the U.S. to study with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

As his talent blossomed and his repertoire expanded, he began to enter competitions. Among the many titles added to his resume were: first prize in the Fifth Xing Hai Cup Piano Competition in Beijing, first prize and "outstanding artistic performance" in the Fourth International Young Pianists Competition in Germany, and first prize at the Second Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians' Competition held in 1995 in Japan.

In April 2001, the eighteen-year-old Lang Lang made his critically acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut.  He has also given concerts with the New York Philharmonic; the Chicago Symphony; the NDR Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg; the St. Petersburg Philharmonic; and the Philadelphia Orchestra.  In Beijing, he performed before an audience of 8,000 at the Great Hall of the People.

Lang Lang’s reputation spread so quickly that a biography in Chinese appeared in bookstores in China prior to his 17th birthday. He has been featured live on "Good Morning America" and"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," and was the subject of articles in The Wall Street Journal and in Teen People's issue highlighting "Top Twenty Teens Who Will Change the World." He also had the distinction of being the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berlin Philharmonic.