Our mission

Pianist Hanbo Ma is recognized as one of today's most promising emerging artists, having performed in solo recitals and with orchestras across Asia, Europe, and North America. Her career began with an appearance at Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, at the age of 17, where her performance of Islamey by Balakirev received high praise. She then garnered further acclaim by winning the San Jose International Piano Competition, the St. Andrews International Piano Competition, and the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, among others, and was selected as the only recipient of the Cobos Piano Prize given by the Eastman School of Music in 2015. Dr. Ma has given numbers of concert tours such as an All-Liszt recital tour in North America and Europe sponsored by the Embassy of Hungary in Washington D.C, Liszt Memorial Museum in Budapest, Hungry and Hungarian Cultural center in London, England; a series of concerts and master classes on French and Russian Music at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, East Tennessee State University, Biola University and Wuhan Conservatory in China; themed concert tour “Music Around the World” focusing on music written by six different composers from five different countries sponsored by the Steinway & Sons and Parsons Music, etc. An active pianist, Dr. Ma not only enjoys solo performances but also collaborating with chamber groups and contemporary composers. She was invited to be one of the twelve scholars at the Heartland Chamber Music Festival, where her chamber performance was live-streamed on Kansas Public Radio. Dr. Ma also collaborated with a string quintet from the University of Southern California to perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2, conducting from the piano. She has premiered numerous works, including the world premiere of Ben Kwok’s Sounds From the Lung Fields, Dr. Chih-long Hu’s Formosa Caprices, and Elizabeth Baker’s Four Plane, a piece the composer dedicated to Dr. Ma. Her most recent project involves preparing to record and premiere composer Michael Colina’s Piano Concerto with The Florida Symphony. Dr. Ma is the founder and artistic director of the Cadence Collective Foundation. She holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music. During her time at USC, she also studied composition and orchestral conducting with National Medal of Arts recipient Morten Lauridsen and former Vice President of the New England Conservatory of Music Larry Livingston. Dr. Ma has taught at various institutions, including the Concordia University Irvine Chamber Music Festival and the Orbifold Music Festival. Her free educational online content, the "How to Play..." series, has gained significant recognition with more than 40,000 subscribers. In 2023, she was inducted into the Steinway & Sons Teacher Hall of Fame, alongside piano pedagogues from prestigious institutions such as the Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory, and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her latest CD, "From Schumann, With Love," is now available on all major streaming platforms.