个人简介

Carol Xiong currently serves as Lecturer of Music at UIC. She is also completing her Doctorate of Music at the Université de Montréal, where she is studying piano performance with Jean Saulnier, on a scholarship. Her doctoral thesis is on creating the ideal piano method book. Carol holds an Artist Diploma and Master’s Degree in piano performance from the Université de Montréal, where she also won the Piano Excellence Award. She earned her Bachelor of Music (Honors) from the Eastman School of Music, where she double majored in piano performance and music theory. While at Eastman, Carol won numerous scholarships: Foremost, as a full scholarship Take Five Scholar, Carol focused on the intersection between East and West. Her Take Five thesis made discoveries about the training of Absolute Pitch (a prized musical skill extremely common in China but extremely rare in the West) that countered over 20 years of previous research by other scholars. Also at Eastman, Carol received a full scholarship and stipend from the German Academic Exchange (DAAD), which she used to study in Berlin. She also received an Excellence in German award from the German Consulate. As well, she received a scholarship to study at the Orford Music Academy in Canada. Carol's graduating thesis at Eastman was on the connection between the piano output of Tan Dun and Claude Debussy, the result of which was the penning of a critical edition of Tan Dun's "Eight Memories in Watercolors," as well as a lecture-recital on that topic. Prior to Eastman, Carol received her Associate Diploma of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto (First Class Honors with Distinction) at age 15, where she was twice winner of the highest scholarship and was a student of the Keyboard Department Chair, Karen Quinton. Also that year, she was a summer Teaching Assistant at the University of Toronto OISE Music Program. Carol has had over 12 years of experience teaching piano, starting when she was the youngest music teacher at the second-oldest music school in Canada. Since 2018, Carol has also been a writer for La Scena Musicale, Canada’s biggest and most prestigious classical music magazine. Her writings on music theory, music appreciation, and musical news have been translated into French and published in both English and French across Canada and internationally, with a readership of over 50,000. Carol has performed piano master classes and received coachings from William Aide, Sylvie Beaudette, Edoardo Belotti, Jimmy Brière, Leslie Kinton, Antonin Kubalek, Vincent Lenti, Jamie Parker, John Perry, Maneli Pirzadeh, amongst others.