Pianist Cheng Zhi is recognized for his excellence as a performer and his dedication to performing arts education. Many of his students have achieved excellent scores in ABRSM exams and have performed concerti with orchestras in venues such as the Emerson Paramount Center in Boston and Tsai Performance Center of Boston University. His students have been accepted and have attended several prestigious universities, including Harvard, Cornell, among others.
In 2006, Zhi was awarded first prize in the Khabarovsk International Piano Competition in Khabarovsk, Russia. In 2004, he received his diploma from the International Young Pianists Chopin Competition in Moscow and has been invited as a guest artist to perform in the embassy of Poland in Moscow. Nikolai Petrov, chairman of the competition committee, personally awarded him the bust sculpture of Chopin. The next year, he received first prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Asia (Huabei region, China) and performed Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21 with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Yu Feng in Shenzhen, Guangdong.
In the summer of 2009, while Zhi was a student at college, he performed at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D. C. In May 2014, he performed in the Oberlin commencement recital 2014 at Finney Chapel, Oberlin, OH. Zhi's performances also include solo and chamber music appearances in venues such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Rockport Music-Shalin Liu Performance Center, and Tsai Performance Center of Boston University, among others.
In February 2020, he organized a fundraiser concert at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee for the benefit of the city of Wuhan, China to contain the COVID-19 crisis. These significant donations were promptly delivered to Wuhan Tongji Hospital.
As an eternal student of music, he continues to involve himself in ongoing professional development. Zhi has performed in master classes given by world-renowned piano professors such as Christopher Elton, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Robert McDonald, and Arnold Steinhardt, among others.
Zhi has completed his Master of Music degree under the guidance of Ms. Ya-fei Chuang at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he studied with Professor Robert Shannon. His major teachers also include Min Li, Xue-hua Yao, and Yang Guan.