Overview
Chinese-Canadian pianist Ariel Mo is active across New York and Boston and enjoys performing in a variety of solo, chamber, and more unconventional settings. Her upcoming projects in 2024 include a new solo piano work by Dongryul Lee; a residency at Avaloch Farms with violinist KJ Macdonald; and a four-day festival at Cornell commemorating the 150th anniversary of Charles Ives, featuring guest artist Gilbert Kalish and a variety of solo piano, vocal, and chamber music works. Ariel also has the immense pleasure of joining Boston-based Trio Gaia as their new pianist, and will embark with the group on two tours of the Northeast in 2024-25, including their NYC debut recital for Schneider Concerts in April 2025.
In May 2023, Ariel created and directed WATERx, a hybrid concert and art exhibit examining our irrevocable relationship with water through a dual-lens of psychology and ecology. She has also been featured in other such multimedia collaborations, including Echoes of Change, a project between 8 composers and 4 pianists in support of Iran’s Women-Life-Freedom Movement, and Shanhai Jing, a visual and musical retelling of Chinese mythology.
Ariel's performances have taken her to such diverse locales as Boston’s Symphony Hall, Jordan Hall, and Cutler Majestic Theatre; the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art; Munich’s Residenz Palace; Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue; and Vancouver’s Chan Shun Concert Hall. She was a soloist with the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra (Schumann) and the New England Conservatory Philharmonia with Hugh Wolff (Messiaen). She also appeared alongside Grammy-winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth in the 2019 Robert Mapplethorpe tribute, Triptych, and with members of Ensemble Modern, Eighth Blackbird, Bang On A Can All-Stars, John Heiss’ NEC Contemporary Ensemble, and ALEA III, among others. While in Boston, Ariel performed frequently on the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s “What I Hear” Prelude Concerts. She was also a fellow at Ensemble Modern’s inaugural Hans Zender Akademie, Bang On A Can, Holland International Music Sessions, Norfolk New Music, New Music On the Point; as well as festivals in Gijon, Bowdoin, New Paltz, and Orford. She has been fortunate to work with a range of composers including Kaija Saariaho, David Lang, Amy Beth Kirsten, Alexandra duBois, and Chaya Czernowin, and always looks forward to new projects with her peers.
Ariel begins her DMA in Keyboard Studies at Cornell University this fall; previously, she spent 8 years in Boston and received 2 degrees and 1 diploma from the New England Conservatory, including a double BM in piano performance and music history. In 2022, she received NEC's Tourjée Alumni Award and an Entrepreneurial Musicianship grant. Her work has also been generously supported by the Robert Turnbull Piano Foundation. Ariel is infinitely grateful to her past mentors, pianists Alessio Bax, Pavel Nersessian, Stephen Drury, Bruce Brubaker, and Victor Rosenbaum in Boston; Kenneth Broadway and Ralph Markham in Vancouver; and musicologist Dr. Ellen Exner. Ariel is also an avid reader and collector of postcards, and she is looking forward to spending time in Ithaca, exploring the waterfalls or staying in, cozy, against the winter snows. It will snow, right?